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Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 21:51:09 -0400
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To: Dominic Luechinger <dol+php@snowgarden.ch>
Cc: PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [OpenSSL] Support for ECC public key generation
From: scott@paragonie.com (Scott Arciszewski)

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On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 8:04 PM, Dominic Luechinger <dol+php@snowgarden.ch>
wrote:

> This is a short introduction of a feature I've been working on.
>
> Summary
> -------
> The current OpenSSL extension only supports generating RSA key pairs.
> The PR [1] adds support for ECC (Elliptic curve cryptography) key
> generation. The corresponding bug is 61204 [2].
> -------
>
> Motivation
> ----------
> Why needs PHP support for creating ECC key pairs?
> ECC has the benefit to give the same security grantees as RSA but with
> smaller key sizes.
> The current workaround without this improvement is to generate a key
> pair with the help of the OpenSSL CLI tool (PHP exec) or use a userland
> library like phpecc [3]. To protect against cryptography attack vectors
> like timing attack or other side-channel attacks in PHP is quite
> difficult. A native support would solve this issue or at least gives the
> responsibility to the underlying crypto library.
> ----------
>
> In details
> ----------
> The PR introduces new '$configargs' setting to openssl_pkey_new [4].
> E.g.:
>
> openssl_pkey_new(
>   array(
>     'curve_name' =3D> 'secp384r1',
>     'private_key_type' =3D> OPENSSL_KEYTYPE_EC,
>   )
> );
>
>
> With the new ECC support it's also possible to load ECC key parameters
> into the openssl_pkey_new to create a key resource.
>
> openssl_pkey_new(
>   array(
>     'ec' =3D> array(
>       'curve_name' =3D> 'prime256v1',
>       'd' =3D>
> gmp_export('3138550867681922400546388175470823984762234518836963313664'),
>     ),
>   )
> );
>
> A use case of this possibility is e.g. the transformation on a JWK [5]
> to a ECC key resource.
>
> Despite the extension of openssl_pkey_new a new PHP function is introduce=
d:
> openssl_get_curve_names() list names of the supported curves of the
> underlying OpenSSL core. This function could be used to check if a
> certain curve is supported and could be referenced when generating a new
> key pair.
>
> I'd like to outline that the ECC support is not a new feature. PHP is
> capable of reading and working with ECC key pairs. I've contributed some
> patches to improve the support.
>
> To work with ECC key pairs but not being able to generate a new key pair
> is the main motivation of this PR.
> ----------
>
> Reference to other languages
> ----------------------------
> The following languages have support for a ECC key pair generation:
> Ruby [6]
> Python via cryptography [7]
> Golang [8]
> Java via Bouncycastel [9]
> ----------------------------
>
> Regards
>
> Dominic Luechinger
>
>
> [1] https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/1686
> [2] https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=3D61204
> [3] https://github.com/phpecc/phpecc
> [4] http://php.net/manual/en/function.openssl-pkey-new.php
> [5] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7517#page-25
> [6]
> http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.0.0/libdoc/openssl/rdoc/OpenSSL/PKey/EC.html
> [7] https://cryptography.io/en/latest/hazmat/primitives/asymmetric/ec/
> [8] https://golang.org/pkg/crypto/elliptic/#GenerateKey
> [9]
>
> http://www.bouncycastle.org/wiki/display/JA1/Elliptic+Curve+Key+Pair+Gene=
ration+and+Key+Factories
>
> --
> PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List
> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>
>

While we're at it, can we also add a function to generate (ephemeral)
Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman keys, and then use openssl_dh_compute_key()
with ECDH keys? Because that would be a lot saner than having to
shell_exec() to the OpenSSL binary in userland.

Scott Arciszewski
Chief Development Officer
Paragon Initiative Enterprises <https://paragonie.com/>=E2=80=8B

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