Crypto11

This is an implementation of the standard Golang crypto interfaces that uses PKCS#11 as a backend. The supported features are:

• Generation and retrieval of RSA, DSA and ECDSA keys.
• PKCS#1 v1.5 signing.
• PKCS#1 PSS signing.
• PKCS#1 v1.5 decryption
• PKCS#1 OAEP decryption
• ECDSA signing.
• DSA signing.
• Random number generation.
• AES and DES3 encryption and decryption.
• HMAC support.

Signing is done through the crypto.Signer interface and decryption through crypto.Decrypter.

To verify signatures or encrypt messages, retrieve the public key and do it in software.

See the documentation for details of various limitations, especially regarding symmetric crypto.

Installation

Since v1.0.0, crypto11 requires Go v1.11+. Install the library by running:

go get github.com/ThalesIgnite/crypto11

The crypto11 library needs to be configured with information about your PKCS#11 installation. This is either done programmatically (see the Config struct in the documentation) or via a configuration file. The configuration file is a JSON representation of the Config struct.

A minimal configuration file looks like this:

{
  "Path" : "/usr/lib/softhsm/libsofthsm2.so",
  "TokenLabel": "token1",
  "Pin" : "password"
}

• Path points to the library from your PKCS#11 vendor.
• TokenLabel is the CKA_LABEL of the token you wish to use.
• Pin is the password for the CKU_USER user.

Testing Guidance

Testing with SoftHSM2

To set up a slot:

$ cat softhsm2.conf
directories.tokendir = /home/rjk/go/src/github.com/ThalesIgnite/crypto11/tokens
objectstore.backend = file
log.level = INFO
$ mkdir tokens
$ export SOFTHSM2_CONF=`pwd`/softhsm2.conf
$ softhsm2-util --init-token --slot 0 --label test
=== SO PIN (4-255 characters) ===
Please enter SO PIN: ********
Please reenter SO PIN: ********
=== User PIN (4-255 characters) ===
Please enter user PIN: ********
Please reenter user PIN: ********
The token has been initialized.

The configuration looks like this:

$ cat config
{
  "Path" : "/usr/lib/softhsm/libsofthsm2.so",
  "TokenLabel": "test",
  "Pin" : "password"
}

(At time of writing) OAEP is only partial and HMAC is unsupported, so expect test skips.

Testing with nCipher nShield

In all cases, it's worth enabling nShield PKCS#11 log output:

export CKNFAST_DEBUG=2

To protect keys with a 1/N operator cardset:

$ cat config
{
  "Path" : "/opt/nfast/toolkits/pkcs11/libcknfast.so",
  "TokenLabel": "rjk",
  "Pin" : "password"
}

You can also identify the token by serial number, which in this case means the first 16 hex digits of the operator cardset's token hash:

$ cat config
{
  "Path" : "/opt/nfast/toolkits/pkcs11/libcknfast.so",
  "TokenSerial": "1d42780caa22efd5",
  "Pin" : "password"
}

A card from the cardset must be in the slot when you run go test.

To protect keys with the module only, use the 'accelerator' token:

$ cat config
{
  "Path" : "/opt/nfast/toolkits/pkcs11/libcknfast.so",
  "TokenLabel": "accelerator",
  "Pin" : "password"
}

(At time of writing) GCM is not implemented, so expect test skips.

Limitations

• The PKCS1v15DecryptOptions SessionKeyLen field is not implemented and an error is returned if it is nonzero. The reason for this is that it is not possible for crypto11 to guarantee the constant-time behavior in the specification. See issue #5 for further discussion.
• Symmetric crypto support via cipher.Block is very slow. You can use the BlockModeCloser API (over 400 times as fast on my computer) but you must call the Close() interface (not found in cipher.BlockMode). See issue #6 for further discussion.

Contributions

Contributions are gratefully received. Before beginning work on sizeable changes, please open an issue first to discuss.

Here are some topics we'd like to cover:

• Full test instructions for additional PKCS#11 implementations.
• Move to another resource pool implementation (github.com/vitessio/vitess is a big dependency)