[openssl-dev] [openssl.org #3676] [PATCH] Export ASN1 templates for DH and ECDH groups

[Stephen Henson via RT]

On Sat Mar 05 19:58:57 2016, Matthias.St.Pierre at ncp-e.com wrote:
>
> These functions, although internal, appear to me to be the natural way
> to serialize
> and deserialize private ECDH groups. They are well tested and reusable
> and the only
> reason why they are not public is probably because OpenSSL is focused
> on supplying
> standardized named curves for TLS. Using private ECDH curves might not
> make much sense
> for TLS, but in my case it did: I used it for a VPN client/server
> where the customer
> requested the ability to use private ECDH groups in the IKEv2
> protocol, in addition
> to the official IANA groups.
>
> With the proposed change it was easy for me to serialize the entire
> set of all public
> and private [EC]DH-Groups in single file by creating a few ASN1 rules
> based on the
> existing ASN1 structures (DHparameters resp. EC[PK]PARAMETERS). So
> instead of
> reinventing the wheel, I let OpenSSL do the main part of the
> serialization.
>
> There is a thread that predates the creation of my ticket, where I
> discussed my motivation
> with Daniel Kahn Gillmor, see below. I hope my arguments convince you
> that it is a good
> idea to add these ASN1 structures and the related functions to the
> public api.
>

Well I agree that that ASN.1 structure is a natural way to encode/decode EC
parameters I'm just wondering what alternatives there are. We'd be exposing
internal structures with no accessors whose sole purpose would be to convert
between EC_GROUP and back.

The ideal situation would be an ASN.1 item which handle an EC_GROUP structure
directly instead of the internal form. We don't currently have one though,

Steve.
--
Dr Stephen N. Henson. OpenSSL project core developer.
Commercial tech support now available see: http://www.openssl.org

-- 
Ticket here: http://rt.openssl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3676
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