[kmf-discuss] kmf pktool

[David Major]

Wyllys Ingersoll wrote:
> David -
> 
> I'm adding kmf-discuss to the CC list.  Response below...
> 
> 
> 
> David Major wrote:
> 
>>Hi Wyllys,
>>
>>We are really new to PKI.
>>
>>We are working on a data archiving project which requires SSLv3.
>>
>>	http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/mms/whatis/
>>
>>We are currently using OpenSSL with DSA certs.
> 
> 
> Why DSA?  

MMS is based on several IEEE 1244 specs.

The IEEE standard 1244.2-2000 for Media Management Systems (MMS) Session
Security, Authentication, Initialization Protocol (SSAIP) calls out
using SHA1 to sign messages. According to the O'Reilly "Network Security
with OpenSSL" book RSA does not support SHA1/DSS1. To keep it simple, I
assumed DSA keys were needed so why not use DSA certificates. I also
assume RSA had a patent on it until the year 2000 and the IEEE spec was
published in 2000.

KMF has support for DSA, but it hasn't been tested nearly
> as well as RSA.

We'll also need to store the server's DH and dsa parameters in KMF.
Another assumption we made is all DSA certs are generated using the same
dsa parameters.

> 
> 
>>Do you have or can you point me at an example client/server C program
>>that uses KMF?
> 
> 
> Hmm, not sure if I have what you need or not.   pktool in Solaris has
> a lot of good example code for accessing OpenSSL keys and certificates.
> http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/cmd/cmd-crypto/pktool
> 

I will look into the pktool code.

> 
> 
>>It seems (I feel) most applications are adding certificates to the
>>server and skipping getting the certificate request signed by the CA. Is
>>it valid to use certificates not signed by at least a self-signed
>>certificate authority or does pktool provide that function?
> 
> 
> No it is not secure or useful to have a certificate that is not signed. 
> In fact, it is not a certificate at all until it has a signature, even
> if it is only self-signed.   Most security experts frown on the use of
> self-signed certs in favor of actually getting them signed by a CA
> which will manage the revocation lists properly.
> 

I did not see the value in it either, for example mercurial uses
ssh-keygen certs which I heard is bad practice to use other applications
certificate handling...

You'd have to get a mercurial account from Jon first.  To do that, you
need to generate an ssh key via
$ ssh-keygen -t dsa*
*Then send Jon the ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub and he'll be able to set it up for you
After you authorization, the rest is pretty simple.

> 
>>Can we use KMF across the network to get at a self-signed CA CRL?
> 
> KMF can retrieve CRLs  and certificates across the network.  See the
> "kmf_download_crl" and "kmf_download_cert" functions documented here:
> http://opensolaris.org/os/project/kmf/files/KMFAPI_Reference.pdf
> 
> What you may really want is the "kmf_validate_cert" function (also
> documented above). I don't know of any real-world apps that use these
> functions yet, but they have been tested.

Ok, the IEEE SSAIP spec allows for the hello command and welcome
commands to pass a certificate and an authentication message to valid
its peer on a non-SSL/SSL connection. We are thinking about using
two-authentication and possibly client authentication of the server's
certificate. We currently use the OpenSSL
SSL_CTX_use_certificate_chain_file() and X509_verify_cert() group of
functions for peer verification and revoked cert check.

Thanks,
David

> 
> -Wyllys
>