[Opendnssec-develop] SoftHSM

Roy Arends roy at nominet.org.uk
Tue Dec 2 12:05:44 UTC 2008


Rick van Rein wrote on 12/02/2008 12:53:15 PM:

> Hello,
> 
> Thank you for the good discussion topics on this list.  As introduced by
> Roy last week, I've done a lot of PKCS #11 application development at
> OpenFortress, and will try to add my twopence to this discussion.
> 
> > To be clear, OpenDNSSEC is also capable of using a real HSM, one that 
> > might store keys for encryption purposes as well. So if a pkcs11 
template 
> > is generated for a request, I'd like to contain CKA_SIGN=TRUE (at 
least) 
> > and maybe even CKA_DECRYPT=FALSE.
> 
> There are several CKA_xxx attributes, and many are worthwhile to use.
> Among my favourites are the flags that tell the PKCS #11 implementation
> to avoid export, and to enforce keys having been generated on-token.
> 
> It has been my experience (mainly with USB tokens and smart cards) that
> support for the CKA_xxx flags is not proper and complete for most of the
> tokens, making many libraries will fail if you are over-explicit.  I've
> been talking to quite a few manufacturers and got such flags 
implemented,
> but count on a period of months to wait before any middleware is 
improved
> if you rely on CKA_xxx flags too heavily.  My impression is that most
> token middleware is developed to work with a few browsers and a handful
> of mailers, and then shipped off.  The remaining flags often remain as
> TODO items until someone complains about them.
> 
> > In short, the softtoken does need to 
> > understand (or ignore, but not fail) those attributes.
> 
> This is precisely what worries me.  Ideally, I'd agree.  Practically 
though,
> it may be a serious show-stopper when deploying the OpenDNSSEC daemon on 
a
> given piece of hardware.
> 
> The nuisance of this is that OpenDNSSEC, to be practical, would have to 
be
> configurable for the CKA_xxx flags it relies on, just to make up for any
> half-done middlewares.  I'd love to believe that HSM manufacturers are
> doing better, but honestly I doubt it.

So much for PKCS11 compliant then.

I'll start a new thread on the list to eh, list the equipment we can test 
OpenDNSSEC's PKCS11 compliance reqs against.

Thanks for the info on this.

Roy Arends
Sr Researcher.
Nominet UK







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