ES256 errors with InvalidEcdsaKey about jsonwebtoken

[Keats]

Maybe our pem decoder (https://github.com/Keats/jsonwebtoken/blob/master/src/pem/decoder.rs) doesn't work well in some cases? I don't know, I haven't touched that part in years

[EvilWatermelon]

I have a similiar problem with the error message Error(InvalidKeyFormat)

I found this function with the comment:

/// Can only be PKCS8
    pub fn as_ec_public_key(&self) -> Result<&[u8]> {
        match self.standard {
            Standard::Pkcs1 => Err(ErrorKind::InvalidKeyFormat.into()),
            Standard::Pkcs8 => match self.pem_type {
                PemType::EcPublic => extract_first_bitstring(&self.asn1),
                _ => Err(ErrorKind::InvalidKeyFormat.into()),
            },
        }
    }

As far as I know I can't convert a ec public key to the pkcs8 format. This seems to be a bug?

[delbonis]

I believe I'm having a similar issue. I'm following basically the exact same steps as the above but the library is telling me InvalidEcdsaKey when I try to sign a token. Did OpenSSL change the structure recently and now it's breaking the decoder?

[p-lindberg]

I tried to use an ECDSA key generated by pulumi's privatekey resource and couldn't get it to work. Then I found that the library refuses to parse ECDSA keys in the PKCS#1 format, which apparently is what pulumi generates, as far as I understand it. There's this comment in the code:

// No "EC PRIVATE KEY"
// https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/84327/converting-ecc-private-key-to-pkcs1-format
// "there is no such thing as a "PKCS#1 format" for elliptic curve (EC) keys"

As I understand it, the PKCS#1 format was meant exclusively for RSA keys, and the library author has therefore decided not to support it for ECDSA keys. At the same time, I was able to parse the same key in .NET with no issues, so it seems that at least some other libraries/frameworks allow this format to be used for ECDSA keys.

Given that this format appears to be used for ECDSA keys out in the wild, and that other libraries support it, wouldn't it make sense to support it in jsonwebtoken as well?

[eighty4]

@p-lindberg that sounds like a separate issue. My error was fixed by changing the elliptic curve and not the container.