PKI (version 0.1-14)

ASN1: Functions for handling ASN.1 format (typically DER)

Description

ASN1.decode decodes ASN.1 binary format into raw format chunks tagged with class types.

ASN1.encode converts structured objects into ASN.1 binary format.

ASN1.item creates an item - basic object in structures that can be encoded using ASN1.encode.

ASN1.type extracts the class type from an ASN.1 item

Usage

ASN1.decode(what)
ASN1.encode(what)
ASN1.item(what, type)
ASN1.type(what)

Value

ASN1.decode returns either one item or a list.

ASN1.encode returns a raw vector in DER format.

ASN1.type returns an integer class type

ASN1.item returns an ASN.1 item object

Arguments

what

object to decode/encode/query

type

class type of the item (integer value)

Author

Simon Urbanek

Details

This is a suite of low-level tools to deal with ASN.1 (Abstract Syntax Notation One) binary formats DER, BER and CER. The tools were written specifically to handle the various DER-encoded key structures so it provides only a subset of the ASN.1 specification. They are used internally by the PKI poackage.

ASN1.decode decodes the binary representation (as raw vector) into individual items. Sequences are convered into lists, all other objects are retained in their binary form and tagged with the integer class type - which can be obtained using ASN1.type function.

ASN1.encode expects item (or a list of items) either created using ASN1.decode or ASN1.item and converts them into DER binary format.

The result of ASN1.encode(ASN1.decode(x)) will be x if x was in DER format.

Examples

# generate a small key
key <- PKI.genRSAkey(bits = 512L)

# extract private and public parts in DER format
prv <- PKI.save.key(key, format="DER")
pub <- PKI.save.key(key, private=FALSE, format="DER")

# parse the public key
x <- ASN1.decode(pub)
x
# the second element is the actual key
# as a bit string that's itself in DER
# two integers - modulus and exponent
# Note that this is in fact the pure PKCS#1 key format
ASN1.decode(x[[2]])

# encoding it back should yield the same representation since it is DER
stopifnot(identical(ASN1.encode(x), as.raw(pub)))