RSA Public/Private Key SecRefKey Necessary in iOS?

Question

I have generated an RSA Key Pair, a public and a private key. They are both Strings.

I see sources showing that, the private key are always saved in the keychain and then retrieved as SecKeyRef/KeyRef.

After it is saved, it is then retrieved, used and then deleted.

My question is, is it possible to use the RSA Private Key as an NSString to decrypt, without saving it in the keychain first?

If it is a string, then yes. It would just be NSString(string: <#PrivateKey#>). Whether this can be used to decrypt or not depends on whether you are writing the RSA code and your function can accept a string as a key or whether it is a third-party library that does this for you. — Todd

Max Max · Accepted Answer · 2021-02-26T15:46:50

Yes, if you use another library. I use OpenSSL in my app to circumvent using the Security framework for simple stuff like this. OpenSSL provides its own API: PEM_read_bio_PrivateKey, EVP_PKEY_get1_RSA, RSA_private_decrypt

RSA Public/Private Key SecRefKey Necessary in iOS?

1 Answers