Load RSA public key from file

Question

I've generated a private key with:

openssl genrsa [-out file] –des3

After this I've generated a public key with:

openssl rsa –pubout -in private.key [-out file]

I want to sign some messages with my private key, and verify some other messages with my public key, using code like this:

public String sign(String message) throws SignatureException{
    try {
        Signature sign = Signature.getInstance("SHA1withRSA");
        sign.initSign(privateKey);
        sign.update(message.getBytes("UTF-8"));
        return new String(Base64.encodeBase64(sign.sign()),"UTF-8");
    } catch (Exception ex) {
        throw new SignatureException(ex);
    }
}

public boolean verify(String message, String signature) throws SignatureException{
    try {
        Signature sign = Signature.getInstance("SHA1withRSA");
        sign.initVerify(publicKey);
        sign.update(message.getBytes("UTF-8"));
        return sign.verify(Base64.decodeBase64(signature.getBytes("UTF-8")));
    } catch (Exception ex) {
        throw new SignatureException(ex);
    }
}

I found a solution to convert my private key to PKCS8 format and load it. It works with some code like this:

public PrivateKey getPrivateKey(String filename) throws Exception {

    File f = new File(filename);
    FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(f);
    DataInputStream dis = new DataInputStream(fis);
    byte[] keyBytes = new byte[(int) f.length()];
    dis.readFully(keyBytes);
    dis.close();
    PKCS8EncodedKeySpec spec = new PKCS8EncodedKeySpec(keyBytes);
    KeyFactory kf =
            KeyFactory.getInstance("RSA");
    return kf.generatePrivate(spec);
}

And finally my question is: How do I load my RSA Public Key from a file?

I think maybe I need to convert my public key file to x509 format, and use X509EncodedKeySpec. But how can I do this?

Answer 1

Below is the relevant information from the link which Zaki provided.

Generate a 2048-bit RSA private key

$ openssl genrsa -out private_key.pem 2048

Convert private Key to PKCS#8 format (so Java can read it)

$ openssl pkcs8 -topk8 -inform PEM -outform DER -in private_key.pem -out private_key.der -nocrypt

Output public key portion in DER format (so Java can read it)

$ openssl rsa -in private_key.pem -pubout -outform DER -out public_key.der

Private key

import java.io.*;
import java.nio.*;
import java.security.*;
import java.security.spec.*;

public class PrivateKeyReader {

  public static PrivateKey get(String filename)
  throws Exception {

    byte[] keyBytes = Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get(filename));

    PKCS8EncodedKeySpec spec =
      new PKCS8EncodedKeySpec(keyBytes);
    KeyFactory kf = KeyFactory.getInstance("RSA");
    return kf.generatePrivate(spec);
  }
}

Public key

import java.io.*;
import java.nio.*;
import java.security.*;
import java.security.spec.*;

public class PublicKeyReader {

  public static PublicKey get(String filename)
    throws Exception {

    byte[] keyBytes = Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get(filename));

    X509EncodedKeySpec spec =
      new X509EncodedKeySpec(keyBytes);
    KeyFactory kf = KeyFactory.getInstance("RSA");
    return kf.generatePublic(spec);
  }
}