NAME

       ipsec_rsasigkey - generate RSA signature key

SYNOPSIS

       ipsec rsasigkey [--verbose] [--random filename] [--rounds nr] [--configdir nssdbdir]
             [--password nsspassword] [--hostname hostname] [--noopt] nbits

       ipsec rsasigkey [--verbose] [--configdir nssdbdir] [--password nsspassword]
             [--hostname hostname] [--noopt] [--oldkey filename]

DESCRIPTION

       Rsasigkey generates an RSA public/private key pair, suitable for digital signatures, of
       (exactly) nbits bits (that is, two primes each of exactly nbits/2 bits, and related
       numbers) and emits it on standard output as ASCII (mostly hex) data.  nbits must be a
       multiple of 16.

       The public exponent is forced to the value 3, which has important speed advantages for
       signature checking. Beware that the resulting keys have known weaknesses as encryption
       keys and should not be used for that purpose.

       The --verbose option makesrsasigkey give a running commentary on standard error. By
       default, it works in silence until it is ready to generate output.

       The --random option specifies a source for random bits. The default is /dev/random (see
       random(4)). Normally, rsasigkey reads exactly nbits random bits from the source; in
       extremely-rare circumstances it may need more. Under Linux with hardware random support,
       the special device /dev/hw_random is created. However, the driver does not guarantee FIPS
       compliant random, and some hardware is so broken that it return extremely non-random data.
       Therefor /dev/hw_random should never be used with the --random option. Instead, one should
       run the rngd(8) daemon to funnel randomness from /dev/hw_random into /dev/random.

       The --rounds option specifies the number of rounds to be done by the pz_probab_prime_p
       probabilistic primality checker. The default, 30, is fairly rigorous and should not
       normally have to be overridden.

       The --configdir option specifies the nss configuration directory to use. This is the
       directory where the NSS certificate, key and security modules databases reside.

       The --password option specifies the nss cryptographic module authentication password if
       the NSS module has been configured to require it. A password is required by hardware
       tokens and also by the internal softotken module when configured to run in FIPS mode.

       The --hostname option specifies what host name to use in the first line of the output (see
       below); the default is what gethostname(2) returns.

       The --noopt option suppresses an optimization of the private key (to be precise, setting
       of the decryption exponent to lcm(p-1,q-1) rather than (p-1)*(q-1)) which speeds up
       operations on it slightly but can cause it to flunk a validity check in old RSA
       implementations (notably, obsolete versions of ipsec_pluto(8)

       --oldkey option specifies that rather than generate a new key, rsasigkey should read an
       old key from the file (the name ´-´ means ´standard input´) and use that to generate its
       output. Input lines which do not look like rsasigkey output are silently ignored. This
       permits updating old keys to the current format.

       The output format looks like this (with long numbers trimmed down for clarity):

                # RSA 2048 bits   xy.example.com   Sat Apr 15 13:53:22 2000
                # for signatures only, UNSAFE FOR ENCRYPTION
                #pubkey=0sAQOF8tZ2NZt...Y1P+buFuFn/
                Modulus: 0xcc2a86fcf440...cf1011abb82d1
                PublicExponent: 0x03
                # everything after this point is secret
                PrivateExponent: 0x881c59fdf8...ab05c8c77d23
                Prime1: 0xf49fd1f779...46504c7bf3
                Prime2: 0xd5a9108453...321d43cb2b
                Exponent1: 0xa31536a4fb...536d98adda7f7
                Exponent2: 0x8e70b5ad8d...9142168d7dcc7
                Coefficient: 0xafb761d001...0c13e98d98

       The first (comment) line, indicating the nature and date of the key, and giving a host
       name, is used by ipsec_showhostkey(8) when generating some forms of key output.

       The commented-out pubkey= line contains the public key, the public exponent and the
       modulus combined in approximately RFC 2537 format (the one deviation is that the combined
       value is given with a 0s prefix, rather than in unadorned base-64), suitable for use in
       the ipsec.conf file.

       The Modulus, PublicExponent and PrivateExponent lines give the basic signing and
       verification data.

       The Prime1 and Prime2 lines give the primes themselves (aka p and q), largest first. The
       Exponent1 and Exponent2 lines give the private exponent mod p-1 and q-1 respectively. The
       Coefficient line gives the Chinese Remainder Theorem coefficient, which is the inverse of
       q, mod p. These additional numbers (which must all be kept as secret as the private
       exponent) are precomputed aids to rapid signature generation.

       No attempt is made to break long lines.

       The US patent on the RSA algorithm expired 20 Sept 2000.

EXAMPLES

       ipsec rsasigkey --verbose 2192 >mykey.txt
           generates a 2192-bit signature key and puts it in the file mykey.txt, with running
           commentary on standard error. The file contents can be inserted verbatim into a
           suitable entry in the ipsec.secrets file (see ipsec_secrets(5)), and the public key
           can then be extracted and edited into the ipsec.conf (see ipsec_showhostkey(8)).

       ipsec rsasigkey --verbose --oldkey oldie >latest.txt
           takes the old signature key from file oldie and puts a version in the current format
           into the file latest, with running commentary on standard error.

FILES

       /dev/random, /dev/urandom

SEE ALSO

       random(4), rngd(8), ipsec_showhostkey(8), Applied Cryptography, 2nd. ed., by Bruce
       Schneier, Wiley 1996, RFCs 2537, 2313, GNU MP, the GNU multiple precision arithmetic
       library, edition 2.0.2, by Torbj Granlund

HISTORY

       Written for the Linux FreeS/WAN project <http://www.freeswan.org> by Henry Spencer.

BUGS

       There is an internal limit on nbits, currently 20000.

       rsasigkey´s run time is difficult to predict, since /dev/random output can be arbitrarily
       delayed if the system´s entropy pool is low on randomness, and the time taken by the
       search for primes is also somewhat unpredictable. A reasonably typical time for a 1024-bit
       key on a quiet 100MHz Pentium MMX with plenty of randomness available is 20 seconds,
       almost all of it in the prime searches. Generating a 2192-bit key on the same system
       usually takes several minutes. A 4096-bit key took an hour and a half of CPU time.

       The --oldkey option does not check its input format as rigorously as it might. Corrupted
       rsasigkey output may confuse it.

[FIXME: source]                             01/06/2011                         IPSEC_RSASIGKEY(8)