[openssl-dev] [RFC 0/2] Proposal for seamless handling of TPM based RSA keys in openssl

[David Woodhouse]

On Wed, 2016-11-23 at 14:26 +0100, Richard Levitte wrote:
> 
> Quite frankly, that's a though that should go back to David and his
> demand of automatic detection.  If anyone would *ever* create a raw
> DER file holding a tss OCTET STRING, then the file spec *will* have to
> have an indication of what type of content it is.
> If we're thinking in URI terms, I could think of a contraption like
> file:whatever.pem?t=tsskeyblob ...  or dare I say it,
> tpmkey:file=whatever.pem  (David is so going to hate me ;-) ...)

Nah, that's fine. I mean, I hated you already, but I don't hate you any
*more* for that observation.

I don't care about supporting every bizarre esoteric format under the
sun. All I'm after is consistency between applications for the *common*
and *reasonable* file formats.

Right now, if I have a PKCS#12 file with my identity certificate, I can
use that with a *subset* of the applications installed in my system.

If I have a PKCS#8 file, I can use that with a *different* subset of
the applications. A different subset according to whether it's PEM or
DER.

If it's on a PKCS#11 token, I can use that with a *different* subset.

And many applications can be configured to build with a choice of
crypto libraries, so the formats they support will be *different* from
one distribution to another.

It's that mess that I'm trying to fix, but only for the key formats
which are common enough that users have a reasonable expectation that
they'll work.

If some nutter starts writing the TPM_KEY12 OCTET STREAM to a DER file
without even using the TssBlob structure from the TSS spec, I am not
going to lose any sleep over that.

And note that I am actively soliciting input on *what* forms should be
expected to "Just Work" and which are less important.

Perhaps there's a case to be made for ditching DER entirely and
expecting people to use PEM? Or at least expect DER to work only for
PKCS#12, PKCS#8 and PKCS#1?

I'd certainly be OK with never adding any *new* DER forms to the list
of "shall be expected to work", and requiring PEM instead for anything
new. With the caveat that I *am* being led by what's actually out there
in the wild, being issued to users through their corporate and other
PKI infrastructure.

-- 
dwmw2
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