How can I sign a file using RSA and SHA256 with .N

Question

My application will take a set of files and sign them. (I'm not trying to sign an assembly.) There is a .p12 file that I get the private key from.

This is the code I was trying to use, but I get a System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException "Invalid algorithm specified.".

X509Certificate pXCert = new X509Certificate2(@"keyStore.p12", "password");
RSACryptoServiceProvider csp = (RSACryptoServiceProvider)pXCert.PrivateKey;
string id = CryptoConfig.MapNameToOID("SHA256");
return csp.SignData(File.ReadAllBytes(filePath), id);

According to this answer it can't be done (the RSACryptoServiceProvider does not support SHA-256), but I was hoping that it might be possible using a different library, like Bouncy Castle.

I'm new to this stuff and I'm finding Bouncy Castle to be very confusing. I'm porting a Java app to C# and I have to use the same type of encryption to sign the files, so I am stuck with RSA + SHA256.

How can I do this using Bouncy Castle, OpenSSL.NET, Security.Cryptography, or another 3rd party library I haven't heard of? I'm assuming, if it can be done in Java then it can be done in C#.

UPDATE:

this is what I got from the link in poupou's anwser

        X509Certificate2 cert = new X509Certificate2(KeyStoreFile, password");
        RSACryptoServiceProvider rsacsp = (RSACryptoServiceProvider)cert.PrivateKey;
        CspParameters cspParam = new CspParameters();
        cspParam.KeyContainerName = rsacsp.CspKeyContainerInfo.KeyContainerName;
        cspParam.KeyNumber = rsacsp.CspKeyContainerInfo.KeyNumber == KeyNumber.Exchange ? 1 : 2;
        RSACryptoServiceProvider aescsp = new RSACryptoServiceProvider(cspParam);
        aescsp.PersistKeyInCsp = false;
        byte[] signed = aescsp.SignData(File.ReadAllBytes(file), "SHA256");
        bool isValid = aescsp.VerifyData(File.ReadAllBytes(file), "SHA256", signed);

The problem is that I'm not getting the same results as I got with the original tool. As far as I can tell from reading the code the CryptoServiceProvider that does the actual signing is not using the PrivateKey from key store file. Is that Correct?

Answer 1

This is how I dealt with that problem:

 X509Certificate2 privateCert = new X509Certificate2("certificate.pfx", password, X509KeyStorageFlags.Exportable);

 // This instance can not sign and verify with SHA256:
 RSACryptoServiceProvider privateKey = (RSACryptoServiceProvider)privateCert.PrivateKey;

 // This one can:
 RSACryptoServiceProvider privateKey1 = new RSACryptoServiceProvider();
 privateKey1.ImportParameters(privateKey.ExportParameters(true));

 byte[] data = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("Data to be signed"); 

 byte[] signature = privateKey1.SignData(data, "SHA256");

 bool isValid = privateKey1.VerifyData(data, "SHA256", signature);

Answer 2

The use of privateKey.toXMLString(true) or privateKey.exportParameters(true) aren't usable in a secure environment, since they require your private key to be exportable, which is NOT a good practice.

A better solution is to explicitly load the "Enhanced" crypto provider as such:

// Find my openssl-generated cert from the registry
var store = new X509Store(StoreLocation.LocalMachine);
store.Open(OpenFlags.ReadOnly);
var certificates = store.Certificates.Find(X509FindType.FindBySubjectName, "myapp.com", true);
var certificate = certificates[0];
store.Close();
// Note that this will return a Basic crypto provider, with only SHA-1 support
var privKey = (RSACryptoServiceProvider)certificate.PrivateKey;
// Force use of the Enhanced RSA and AES Cryptographic Provider with openssl-generated SHA256 keys
var enhCsp = new RSACryptoServiceProvider().CspKeyContainerInfo;
var cspparams = new CspParameters(enhCsp.ProviderType, enhCsp.ProviderName, privKey.CspKeyContainerInfo.KeyContainerName);
privKey = new RSACryptoServiceProvider(cspparams);

Answer 3

I have noticed similar issues in .NET with the wrong private key being used (or was it flat-out errors? I do not recall) when the certificate I am working with is not in the user/computer certificate store. Installing it into the stored fixed the problem for my scenario and things started working as expected - perhaps you can try that.

Answer 4

I settled on changing the key file to specify the appropriate Crypto Service Provider, avoiding the issue in .NET altogether.

So when I create a PFX file out of a PEM private key and a CRT public certificate, I do it as follows:

openssl pkcs12 -export -aes256 -CSP "Microsoft Enhanced RSA and AES Cryptographic Provider" -inkey priv.pem -in pub.crt -out priv.pfx

The key part being -CSP "Microsoft Enhanced RSA and AES Cryptographic Provider".

(-inkey specifies the private key file and -in specifies the public certificate to incorporate.)

You may need to tweak this for the file formats you have on hand. The command line examples on this page can help with that: https://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-converter.html

I found this solution here: http://hintdesk.com/c-how-to-fix-invalid-algorithm-specified-when-signing-with-sha256/

Answer 5

According to this blog it should work with FX 3.5 (see note below). However it's important to recall that most of .NET cryptography is based on CryptoAPI (even if CNG is being more and more exposed in recent FX releases).

The key point is that CryptoAPI algorithm support depends on the Crypto Service Provider (CSP) being used and that varies a bit between Windows versions (i.e. what's working on Windows 7 might not work on Windows 2000).

Read the comments (from the blog entry) to see a possible workaround where you specify the AES CSP (instead of the default one) when creating your RSACCryptoServiceProvider instance. That seems to work for some people, YMMV.

Note: this is confusing to many people because all the released .NET frameworks includes a managed implementation of SHA256 which cannot be used by CryptoAPI. FWIW Mono does not suffer from such issues ;-)

Answer 6

Use can use this on more recent frameworks.

    public byte[] GetSignature(byte[] inputData)
    {
        using (var rsa = this.signingCertificate.GetRSAPrivateKey())
        {
            return rsa.SignData(inputData, HashAlgorithmName.SHA256, RSASignaturePadding.Pkcs1);
        }
    }

    public bool ValidateSignature(byte[] inputData, byte[] signature)
    {
        using (var rsa = this.signingCertificate.GetRSAPublicKey())
        {
            return rsa.VerifyData(inputData, signature, HashAlgorithmName.SHA256, RSASignaturePadding.Pkcs1);
        }
    }

The signingCertificate above is a X509Certificate2 with a private key. This method does not require you to import any existing keys and works in a secure environment.