[kmf-discuss] pktool fixes for exporting symmetric keys

Wyllys Ingersoll wyllys.ingersoll at sun.com
Wed Dec 19 13:21:26 PST 2007


Recent fixes to pktool for supporting the find_key operation (pktool 
export ...)
have exposed a gap in the coverage of different key types for the utility.

pktool now has no way to isolate just symmetric keys and export/delete 
them because
there is no user interface (i.e. CLI option) for specifying that the 
user just wants
to export a symmetric key. 

This is primarily an issue with symmetric keys in a PKCS#11 keystore 
because the
"objtype" values allowed are: objtype=key[:[public | private | both]]

I think we need either a new objtype, something like "symkey".  Or we need
a new modifier for the existing key, "symmetric"

The choices are to support one of these 2 key/value pairs for the CLI:

objtype=[cert | key[:[public | private | both]] | symkey ]

OR

objtype=[cert | key[:public | private | both | symmetric | all]]

I think we have to keep the public/private/both modifiers to retain 
backwards compat with
pre-KMF versions of the tool.

I think I prefer the 1st choice - add a new objtype rather than a new 
key modifier since
I think that the key modifier stuff makes things more complicated than 
it needs to be
anyway.

Thoughts?

-Wyllys



More information about the kmf-discuss mailing list