Getting RSA private key from PEM BASE64 Encoded private key file

Question

I have a private key file (PEM BASE64 encoded). I want to use it else where to decrypt some other data.Using Java i tried to read the file and decode the BASE64 encoded data in it... This is the code snippet which i tried....

import java.io.*;
import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
import java.security.*;
import java.security.spec.PKCS8EncodedKeySpec;
import com.ibm.crypto.fips.provider.RSAPrivateKey;
import com.ibm.misc.BASE64Decoder;

public class GetPrivateKey {
    public static RSAPrivateKey get() throws Exception {
        File privateKeyFile = new File("privatekey.key");
        byte[] encodedKey = new byte[(int) privateKeyFile.length()];
        new FileInputStream(privateKeyFile).read(encodedKey);
        ByteBuffer keyBytes = new BASE64Decoder().decodeBufferToByteBuffer(encodedKey.toString());
        PKCS8EncodedKeySpec privateKeySpec = new PKCS8EncodedKeySpec(keyBytes.array());
        KeyFactory kf = KeyFactory.getInstance("RSA", "IBMJCEFIPS");
        RSAPrivateKey pk = (RSAPrivateKey) kf.generatePrivate(privateKeySpec);
        return pk;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        PrivateKey privKey = FormatMePlease.get();
        System.out.println(privKey.toString());
    }

}

I am getting the following errors

Exception in thread "main" java.security.spec.InvalidKeySpecException: Inappropriate key specification: DerInputStream.getLength(): lengthTag=127, too big.
at com.ibm.crypto.fips.provider.RSAKeyFactory.b(Unknown Source)
at com.ibm.crypto.fips.provider.RSAKeyFactory.engineGeneratePrivate(Unknown Source)
at java.security.KeyFactory.generatePrivate(Unknown Source)
at GetPrivateKey.get(GetPrivateKey.java:24)
at GetPrivateKey.main(GetPrivateKey.java:29)

The contents of the file "privatekey.key"

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----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-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

Similar questions have been posted here, but those were of no avail for me. Almost all of them suggested using Bouncycastle provider which am not willing to use as am supposed to use a provider which is FIPS compliant and am not sure if BC provider is FIPS compliant.

A help in gettin me out of this would be highly appreciated... Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You've just published that private key, so now the whole world knows what it is. Hopefully that was just for testing.

EDIT: Others have noted that the openssl text header of the published key, -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----, indicates that it is PKCS#1. However, the actual Base64 contents of the key in question is PKCS#8. Evidently the OP copy and pasted the header and trailer of a PKCS#1 key onto the PKCS#8 key for some unknown reason. The sample code I've provided below works with PKCS#8 private keys.

Here is some code that will create the private key from that data. You'll have to replace the Base64 decoding with your IBM Base64 decoder.

public class RSAToy {

    private static final String BEGIN_RSA_PRIVATE_KEY = "-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\n"
            + "MIIEuwIBADAN ...skipped the rest\n"
         // + ...   
         // + ... skipped the rest
         // + ...   
            + "-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----";

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

        // Remove the first and last lines

        String privKeyPEM = BEGIN_RSA_PRIVATE_KEY.replace("-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\n", "");
        privKeyPEM = privKeyPEM.replace("-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----", "");
        System.out.println(privKeyPEM);

        // Base64 decode the data

        byte [] encoded = Base64.decode(privKeyPEM);

        // PKCS8 decode the encoded RSA private key

        PKCS8EncodedKeySpec keySpec = new PKCS8EncodedKeySpec(encoded);
        KeyFactory kf = KeyFactory.getInstance("RSA");
        PrivateKey privKey = kf.generatePrivate(keySpec);

        // Display the results

        System.out.println(privKey);
    }
}