Adding RSA keys to the iPhone keychain

Question

I'm trying to add a public and private RSA keys to the iPhone's keychain, so I can use the CommonCrypto library, but am not entirely sure how to do that. The MYCrypto library seems to only work for the Mac and not the iPhone right now. Can anyone help and explain how to add a private/public key to the keychain and get a SecKeyRef to them?

How are you storing these keys? In a certificate or P12 package? — bbrown

mikeho mikeho · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-20T04:58:54

So in iOS, the keychain is sandboxed, AFAIK. This means that whatever you put into the keychain is only accessible by your app and your app alone unless you specify otherwise. You have to enable Keychain Sharing under Capabilities in the project settings.

Now that that's out of the way, you can certainly import the data. Since they're NSString objects, you'd first have to convert that to NSData objects to import them correctly. Most likely, they're encoded in Base64, so you'lL have to reverse that:

NSData *decodedData = [[NSData alloc] initWithBase64EncodedString:base64String options:0];

Now that that's done, you can use this method to both save your key to the keychain and get the SecKeyRef:

/**
 * key: the data you're importing
 * keySize: the length of the key (512, 1024, 2048)
 * isPrivate: is this a private key or public key?
 */
- (SecKeyRef)saveKeyToKeychain:(NSData *)key keySize:(NSUInteger)keySize private:(BOOL)isPrivate {
    OSStatus sanityCheck = noErr;
    NSData *tag;
    id keyClass;

    if (isPrivate) {
        tag = privateTag;
        keyClass = (__bridge id) kSecAttrKeyClassPrivate;
    }
    else {
        tag = publicTag;
        keyClass = (__bridge id) kSecAttrKeyClassPublic;
    }

    NSDictionary *saveDict = @{
            (__bridge id) kSecClass : (__bridge id) kSecClassKey,
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrKeyType : (__bridge id) kSecAttrKeyTypeRSA,
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrApplicationTag : tag,
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrKeyClass : keyClass,
            (__bridge id) kSecValueData : key,
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrKeySizeInBits : [NSNumber numberWithUnsignedInteger:keySize],
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrEffectiveKeySize : [NSNumber numberWithUnsignedInteger:keySize],
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrCanDerive : (__bridge id) kCFBooleanFalse,
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrCanEncrypt : (__bridge id) kCFBooleanTrue,
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrCanDecrypt : (__bridge id) kCFBooleanFalse,
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrCanVerify : (__bridge id) kCFBooleanTrue,
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrCanSign : (__bridge id) kCFBooleanFalse,
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrCanWrap : (__bridge id) kCFBooleanTrue,
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrCanUnwrap : (__bridge id) kCFBooleanFalse
    };

    SecKeyRef savedKeyRef = NULL;
    sanityCheck = SecItemAdd((__bridge CFDictionaryRef) saveDict, (CFTypeRef *)&savedKeyRef);
    if (sanityCheck != errSecSuccess) {
        LOGGING_FACILITY1(sanityCheck != noErr, @"Problem saving the key to keychain, OSStatus == %d.", sanityCheck);
    }

    return savedKeyRef;
}

Later, if you want to retrieve the SecKeyRef from the keychain, you can use this:

- (SecKeyRef)getKeyRef:(BOOL)isPrivate {
    OSStatus sanityCheck = noErr;
    NSData *tag;
    id keyClass;
    if (isPrivate) {
        if (privateKeyRef != NULL) {
            // already exists in memory, return
            return privateKeyRef;
        }
        tag = privateTag;
        keyClass = (__bridge id) kSecAttrKeyClassPrivate;
    }
    else {
        if (publicKeyRef != NULL) {
            // already exists in memory, return
            return publicKeyRef;
        }
        tag = publicTag;
        keyClass = (__bridge id) kSecAttrKeyClassPublic;
    }

    NSDictionary *queryDict = @{
            (__bridge id) kSecClass : (__bridge id) kSecClassKey,
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrKeyType : (__bridge id) kSecAttrKeyTypeRSA,
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrApplicationTag : tag,
            (__bridge id) kSecAttrKeyClass : keyClass,
            (__bridge id) kSecReturnRef : (__bridge id) kCFBooleanTrue
    };

    SecKeyRef keyReference = NULL;
    sanityCheck = SecItemCopyMatching((__bridge CFDictionaryRef) queryDict, (CFTypeRef *) &keyReference);
    if (sanityCheck != errSecSuccess) {
        NSLog(@"Error trying to retrieve key from server. isPrivate: %d. sanityCheck: %li", isPrivate, sanityCheck);
    }

    if (isPrivate) {
        privateKeyRef = keyReference;
    }
    else {
        publicKeyRef = keyReference;
    }
    return keyReference;
}

About privateTag and publicTag

privateTag and publicTag are used to mark the kSecAttrApplicationTag which defines the application that uses this key. You want to have a separate privateTag and publicTag to differentiate between your private key and public key.

It's a bit convoluted because I followed the sample code, but I defined my privateTag and publicTag this way:

SecKeyWrapper.h

#define kPublicKeyTag           "com.sample.app.publickey"
#define kPrivateKeyTag          "com.sample.app.privatekey"

SecKeyWrapper.m

// just under @implementation or @synthesize lines
static const uint8_t publicKeyIdentifier[] = kPublicKeyTag;
static const uint8_t privateKeyIdentifier[] = kPrivateKeyTag;

- (id)init {
    if (self = [super init]) {
        // Tag data to search for keys.
        privateTag = [[NSData alloc] initWithBytes:privateKeyIdentifier length:sizeof(privateKeyIdentifier)];
        publicTag = [[NSData alloc] initWithBytes:publicKeyIdentifier length:sizeof(publicKeyIdentifier)];
    }

    return self;
}

Then use the privateTag and publicTag as you would in the code samples I provided above.

Adding RSA keys to the iPhone keychain

4 Answers

About privateTag and publicTag