Using the Go programming language to perform ECC operations with the eHSM module
This Go example demonstrates how to perform elliptic curve cryptography with the eHSM module. For integration we use the mature PKCS11 Go wrapper by Miek Gieben, with a small change to compile it on Mac OS.
As usual, for the full source code, refer to the github repository.
First, we need to load the native shared library and initialize the wrapper:
// change to point to the shared library for your platform
// or set EHSM_LIB environment variable
libname := "/usr/local/lib/libehsm.dylib"
if temp := os.Getenv("EHSM_LIB"); temp != "" {
libname = temp
}
p := pkcs11.New(libname)
As with the C++ example we need to create a session and login to the eHSM (it would make sense to put this in a function so you can re use it):
err = p.Initialize()
if err == nil {
defer p.Destroy()
defer p.Finalize()
var slots []uint
slots, err = p.GetSlotList(true)
if err == nil {
logger.Printf("Slot count: %d.", len(slots))
if len(slots) > 0 {
logger.Println("Using slot 0.")
var session pkcs11.SessionHandle
session, err = p.OpenSession(slots[0], pkcs11.CKF_SERIAL_SESSION|pkcs11.CKF_RW_SESSION)
if err == nil {
err = p.Login(session, pkcs11.CKU_USER, password)
Notice the deferred functions to cleanup the library after use.
Generate a test key pair using the NIST curve secp256r1 identified by its standard object id:
func generateECPair(p *pkcs11.Ctx, session pkcs11.SessionHandle) (pkcs11.ObjectHandle, pkcs11.ObjectHandle, error) {
publicKeyTemplate := []*pkcs11.Attribute{
// oid of P256
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_EC_PARAMS, []byte{0x06, 0x08, 0x2A, 0x86, 0x48, 0xCE, 0x3D, 0x03, 0x01, 0x07}),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_LABEL, "example1_test"),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_ID, 99),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_KEY_TYPE, pkcs11.CKK_EC),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_VERIFY, true),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_ENCRYPT, false),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_WRAP, false),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_TOKEN, false),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_PRIVATE, false),
}
privateKeyTemplate := []*pkcs11.Attribute{
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_LABEL, "example1_test"),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_ID, 99),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_KEY_TYPE, pkcs11.CKK_EC),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_SIGN, true),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_DECRYPT, false),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_UNWRAP, false),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_SENSITIVE, true),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_TOKEN, false),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_PRIVATE, true),
pkcs11.NewAttribute(pkcs11.CKA_EXTRACTABLE, false),
}
mechanism := []*pkcs11.Mechanism{pkcs11.NewMechanism(pkcs11.CKM_EC_KEY_PAIR_GEN, nil)}
return p.GenerateKeyPair(session, mechanism, publicKeyTemplate, privateKeyTemplate)
}
You should familiarize yourself with PKCS#11 object attributes. The attributes set above are the minimum needed for an asymmetric key. To keep the key in permanent storage, change the code above to set CKA_TOKEN to true.
Once the ECC key pair is generated, we use their key handles to sign and verify a block of 8 bytes:
// Test sign and verify using the ECDSA mechanism
func signVerifyData(logger *log.Logger, p *pkcs11.Ctx, session pkcs11.SessionHandle,
pvk pkcs11.ObjectHandle, pbk pkcs11.ObjectHandle) error {
mechanism := []*pkcs11.Mechanism{pkcs11.NewMechanism(pkcs11.CKM_ECDSA, nil)}
var data = []byte{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}
var err = p.SignInit(session, mechanism, pvk)
if err != nil {
logger.Println("Sign init failed.", err)
} else {
var sig []byte
sig, err = p.Sign(session, data)
if err == nil {
log.Print("Signed data.")
err = p.VerifyInit(session, mechanism, pbk)
if err == nil {
err = p.Verify(session, data, sig)
if err == nil {
log.Print("Verified data.")
}
}
}
}
return err
}