[tor-dev] [tor-assistants] Python metrics-lib

[Nick Mathewson]

On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 2:04 AM, Karsten Loesing <karsten at torproject.org> wrote:
> Hi Beck,
>
> I don't have good answers to your questions.  To be honest, when I
> implemented the Java verification code for #2768, I looked for hints in
> an old Java version of Tor, rewrote that code, updated it for current
> BouncyCastle versions using their JavaDocs and examples, and tweaked
> everything until it finally worked. :)
>
> On 5/13/12 9:04 AM, Beck Chen wrote:
>> 1. Specs says signing key is "a public key in PEM format" [1], but
>> what standard does it use? I tried to use M2Crypto, a Python wrapper
>> for OpenSSL, to import this key, but failed. Then I found out that
>> OpenSSL uses X.509 for its public keys, thus M2Crypto only supports
>> X.509 public keys. Then I looked at the Java code for
>> determineKeyHash() and it suggests that the key uses PKCS standard. It
>> seems that PKCS#1 is the final answer, but the javadoc page of
>> PEMReader in BouncyCastle says it can read "OpenSSL PEM encoded
>> streams containing X509 certificates, PKCS8 encoded keys and PKCS7
>> objects" [2]. So is it PKCS#1 or PKCS#8?

In crypto_pk_write_to_string_impl, it's generated via
PEM_write_bio_RSAPublicKey, so (according the manpage) that's a PKCS#1
RSAPublicKey structure.  Let's hope the mangpage is right.

>> And what's the difference?

I'd have to read the standards to find out; if the standards don't
make that clear, let me know and I can give it a try myself.

>> 2. Specs says fingerprint is "a HASH_LEN-byte of asn1 encoded public
>> key, encoded in hex" [1]. But to me, it seems to be "a SHA1 digest of
>> DER encoded public key, encoded in hex". Specifically, is it necessary
>> to specify the length of fingerprint?

That should indeed say say "a HASH_LEN-byte SHA1 digest of"....

"digest" is the part that's strictly necessary to specify, since I
think we say that everything's SHA1 unless somebody says otherwise.

>> And ASN1 is a standard with
>> several possible encoding rules, do we always use DER?

I believe so.

-- 
Nick