Re: Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

An update to keep this thread in sync: we moved the discussion between me and Richard partially offline and partially on (the issue that triggered this vote proposal). Part of the discussion was on our positions and rationales regarding the actual

Re: Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

I assume you are just talking about the ec key? If the public key is not present then that could be seen as an error for operations that require the public key. Shane > On 7 Oct 2020, at 9:54 pm, Dr Paul Dale wrote: > > Would it be feasible to change code that does ->pub_key to call a functi

Re: Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

On Wed, 07 Oct 2020 21:25:57 +0200, Nicola Tuveri wrote: > > On Wed, 7 Oct 2020 at 20:45, Richard Levitte wrote: > > > > I'm as culpable as anyone re pushing the "convention" that an EVP_PKEY > > with a private key should have a public key. I was incorrect. > > Sure, my example was not about po

Re: Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

On Wed, 7 Oct 2020 at 20:45, Richard Levitte wrote: > > I'm as culpable as anyone re pushing the "convention" that an EVP_PKEY > with a private key should have a public key. I was incorrect. Sure, my example was not about pointing fingers! It's just to give recent data points on how the document

Re: Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

On Wed, 7 Oct 2020 at 20:17, Richard Levitte wrote: > > There's no reason for the EVP layer to check for the presence or the > absence or the public key, for one very simple reason: it doesn't have > access to the backend key structure and therefore has no possibility > to make any such checks. S

Re: Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

I'm as culpable as anyone re pushing the "convention" that an EVP_PKEY with a private key should have a public key. I was incorrect. Regarding avoiding NULL checks, that's actually a separate story, evem though it overlaps conveniently. There was the idea, for a while, that we should avoid NULL

Re: Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 8:29 PM Kurt Roeckx wrote: > On Wed, Oct 07, 2020 at 12:29:10PM +0100, Matt Caswell wrote: > > Issue #12612 exposes a problem with how we handle keys that contain > > private components but not public components. > > > > There is a widespread assumption in the code that key

Re: Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

On Wed, Oct 07, 2020 at 12:29:10PM +0100, Matt Caswell wrote: > Issue #12612 exposes a problem with how we handle keys that contain > private components but not public components. > > There is a widespread assumption in the code that keys with private > components must have public components. Ther

Re: Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

Re; "enforcement" My impression is that there is no such enforcement, because the project has (had?) a stance on "avoid NULL checks" and "consider things that break our documented assumptions as programmer errors". The natural result of these two principles may very well be the deliberate reason

Re: Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

There's no reason for the EVP layer to check for the presence or the absence or the public key, for one very simple reason: it doesn't have access to the backend key structure and therefore has no possibility to make any such checks. Such checks should be made in the backend. That part of your pr

Re: Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

As far as I can tell, the existing "enforcement" is in the algorithm implementations. I had a look through the following files in OpenSSL 1.1.1: crypto/rsa/rsa_ossl.c crypto/dsa/dsa_ossl.c crypto/dh/dh_key.c crypto/ec/ecdsa_ossl.c crypto/ec/ecdh_ossl.c I first had a look at the key computing fun

Re: Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

I would also be ok with this vote text formulation. Lets see what others say. Matt On 07/10/2020 16:34, Nicola Tuveri wrote: > I believe the current formulation is slightly concealing part of the problem. > > The way I see it, the intention if the vote passes is to do more than stated: > 1. cha

Re: Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

I believe the current formulation is slightly concealing part of the problem. The way I see it, the intention if the vote passes is to do more than stated: 1. change the long-documented assumption 2. fix "regressions" in 3.0 limited to things that worked in a certain way in 1.1.1 (and maybe before

Re: Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

Would it be feasible to change code that does ->pub_key to call a function that null checks the field and generates the public key if it is absent? Pauli -- Dr Paul Dale | Distinguished Architect | Cryptographic Foundations Phone +61 7 3031 7217 Oracle Australia > On 7 Oct 2020, at 9:29 pm

Vote proposal: Private keys can exist independently of public keys

Issue #12612 exposes a problem with how we handle keys that contain private components but not public components. There is a widespread assumption in the code that keys with private components must have public components. There is text in our public documentation that states this (and that text da