python-pkcs11 with the Nitrokey HSM

So my Nitrokey HSM arrived and it works great, thanks to the Nitrokey peeps for sending me one.

Because the OpenSC PKCS #11 module is a little more lightweight than some of the other vendors, which often implement mechanisms that are not actually supported by the hardware (e.g. the Opencryptoki TPM module), I wrote up some documentation on how to use the device, focusing on how to extract the public keys for using outside of PKCS #11, as the Nitrokey doesn’t implement any of the public key functions.

Nitrokey with python-pkcs11

This also encouraged me to add a whole bunch more of the import/extraction functions for the diverse key formats, including getting very frustrated at the lack of documentation for little things like how OpenSSL stores EC public keys (the answer is as SubjectPublicKeyInfo from X.509), although I think there might be some operating system specific glitches with encoding some DER structures. I think I need to move from pyasn1 to asn1crypto.

Author: Danielle

Danielle is an Australian software engineer, computer scientist and feminist. She doesn't really work on GNOME any more (sadly). Opinions and writing are solely her own and so not represent her employer, the GNOME Foundation, or anyone else but herself.

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Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Australia
This work by Danielle Madeley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Australia.