IETF-SSH archive
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index][Old Index]
Extension of the agent protocol for the PKCS#11 URI scheme
hi,
Oracle's implementation of the X.509 part[1] of the pubkey auth
method in the SSH protocol works with a PKCS#11 URI scheme[2] and as
with plain private keys in files, we allow individual keys to be added
to the agent. For that, we need two new messages in the agent protocol:
byte SSH2_AGENTC_ADD_PKCS11_KEY or
SSH2_AGENTC_ADD_PKCS11_KEY_CONSTRAINED
string PKCS#11 URI
string pin
string[] key_constraints
we could reuse some existing messages, eg. put the URI into
reader_id in SSH_AGENTC_ADD_SMARTCARD_KEY used by OpenSSH but that would
be a hack. The way how OpenSSH works with keystores is different, all
available keys from a PKCS#11 provider are used, if I read the code
correctly.
the agent protocol OpenSSH, SunSSH as its derivative, and quite
a few other implementations use comes from the original ssh-1.x code. It
seems to me that authfd.h and PROTOCOL.agent in the OpenSSH tarball is
now the de facto place for others to read about the current state of the
protocol. I tried to contact the OpenSSH team about possible update of
the file but didn't get a reply.
we would like to notify you about our intention to take two new
agent protocol message numbers. While not a problem on a localhost, if
we (Oracle) clashed with other implementations we could run into
problems when using agent forwarding. For now, we use higher numbers to
avoid possible clash with other extensions:
#define SSH2_AGENTC_ADD_PKCS11_URI_KEY 62
#define SSH2_AGENTC_ADD_PKCS11_URI_KEY_CONSTRAINED 63
please let us now if the numbers we use clash with any
implementation of yours or if you have any other concerns.
thank you, Jan.
[1] http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-saarenmaa-ssh-x509-00.txt
[2] http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-pechanec-pkcs11uri-03.txt
--
Jan Pechanec
http://blogs.sun.com/janp
Home |
Main Index |
Thread Index |
Old Index