Help with SSL 8152 SEC_ERROR_INVALID_KEY Intermittent Error (first post please be kind!)

[Benjamin Kaduk]

Hi Craig,

On Wed, Dec 09, 2020 at 08:35:46PM +0900, Craig Henry wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> This is my first post to this list so please be kind!
> 
> Environment - Linux Centos
> SSL - 1.0.2k19-el7
> 
> Connection - CURL (via PHP) with public / private key auth + http basic auth
> 
> We're having an issue where we are seeing intermittent behavior connecting
> to a 3rd party of the key being rejected with a 8152 error - "The key does
> not support the requested operation". Other times it works OK.
> 
> We have another user who is using this 3rd party and same connection type
> but not reported this issue.
> 
> Has anyone got any clue as to what might be causing this type of
> intermittent connection issue ?

As was already noted, this is not an error generated by OpenSSL.
More concretely, RFC 8152 is for CBOR Object Signing and Encryption (COSE), which is not really
related to TLS at all.  I suspect the error is not from NSS or CURL either but
rather from a COSE implementation.

-Ben