PKCS#11 Provider unable to fetch asymmetric keys and certificates

Question

Hi,
I'm facing a problem while getting keys and certificate from Eracom HSM (ProtectServer Orange:38039 Model: PSO:PL50) using Sun PKCS#11 Provider. It gets only the symmetric keys but NEVER gets the asymmetric keys.
My code snippet and configuration file are:
     Java Code:
     java.io.InputStream is = new java.io.FileInputStream("pkcs11.cfg");
sun.security.pkcs11.SunPKCS11 pkcs11_provider = new sun.security.pkcs11.SunPKCS11(is);
System.out.println("Provider Name : " + pkcs11_provider.getName());
java.security.Security.addProvider(pkcs11_provider);
KeyStore ks = KeyStore.getInstance("PKCS11", pkcs11_provider);
ks.load(null, "password".toCharArray());
java.util.Enumeration obj_enumeration = ks.aliases();
while (obj_enumeration.hasMoreElements()) {
String str_certAlias = (String) obj_enumeration.nextElement();
System.out.println("Alias : " + str_certAlias);
     pkcs11.cfg:
     name = Eracom
     library = G:\Eracom\cryptoki.dll
     slot = 0
     attributes(*, CKO_PRIVATE_KEY, *) = {
     CKA_TOKEN = false
     CKA_SENSITIVE = false
     CKA_EXTRACTABLE = true
     CKA_DECRYPT = true
     CKA_SIGN = true
     CKA_SIGN_RECOVER = true
     CKA_UNWRAP = true
     attributes(*, CKO_PUBLIC_KEY, *) = {
     CKA_ENCRYPT = true
     CKA_VERIFY = true
     CKA_VERIFY_RECOVER = true
     CKA_WRAP = true
I also ran my program without specifying any attributes in configuration file, also tried many other combination, but in all cases (with or without attributes) only symmetric keys are loaded from HSM. I am able to get all keys (symmteric and asymmteric) and certificates from the same HSM using IAIK PKCS#11 Provider. Though, the Sun PKCS#11 Provider is working fine with SmartCard tokens (Rainbow, Alladin etc.)
Any help to resolve my problem would be highly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I recently had a problem with ECDSA and the PKCS#11 library of nCipher. Here's info from one of their engineers about the PKCS11 library:
"There are two separate issues - one is that our current pkcs11
release doesn't support ECDSA signature with SHA-2 hashes
(the v11.00 firmware adds support for it, but the main release version of
the pkcs11 library hasn't been updated to take advantage of it yet).
There is a hotfix version that does support SHA-2 hashes with some
restrictions, talk to [email protected] for details, and V11.10
should be out soon and have that merged in.
But the issue with setting CKA_SIGN is that our underlying HSM API
allows elliptic curve keys to be either key exchange (ECDH) or
signature (ECDSA) keys, but not both at one.
At the PKCS #11 level, if you specify CKA_DERIVE=true and let
CKA_SIGN default, it will default to false, and vice versa.
If you specify both CKA_DERIVE=true and CKA_SIGN=true, then we
return CKR_TEMPLATE_INCONSISTENT because we can't do both with
the same key. (However, the tests using C_GetMechanismInfo will
show that we can do both mechanisms, because we can - so long
as you use different keys, even though they have the same PKCS#11
type.)
I can't comment on when or how that will be changed."
I was using the PKCS#11 library through NSS when I ran into the problem, but I imagine Java would run into similar problems also using the PKCS#11 library. I was able to generate keypairs but not create a CSR (which required making a signature, which required SHA-2).
Can you just use the java classes to speak to the netHSM? I've never directly written code to do so myself, but I have used Corestreet's OCSP product that uses the java classes to speak to the nCipher HSMs (though not using EC). It might work better than going through the PKCS#11 layer. There should be a java directory under NFAST_HOME that contains some jars.
Please post back if you figure anything out as I'll probably be playing with this stuff myself soon.
Dave