Undocumented: ssl-pkcs11-provider - What is a «Security Provider»?

[Marc Wäckerlin]

Hi

I got a proprietary PKCS#11 library (for Post SuisseID smartcard) in
/usr/lib/libcvP11.so.

There is a configuration option «ssl-pkcs11-provider» in ~/.subversion/servers.

But it is absolutely undocumented what this option is, even google doesn't find
anything useful. The only documentation is: «Name of PKCS#11 provider to use».

How is the «Name of PKCS#11 provider» defined? It is *not* the name of the
PKCS#11 library, so what is it?

Everytthing I tried results in «unable to load PKCS#11 provider», e.g.:

user@host:~/svn/project$ LANG= svn up
svn: Invalid config: unable to load PKCS#11 provider '/usr/lib/libcvP11.so'
user@host:~/svn/project$ ls -l /usr/lib/libcvP11.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5279688 Jul 6 14:30 /usr/lib/libcvP11.so

So:
- What is the missing link?
- How to get a PKCS#11 /usr/lib/libcvP11.so library into svn?
- Could you please add some understandable documentation?


Thank you
Regards
Marc

[Daniel Shahaf]

+= dev@, please drop users@ from replies

Marc W�ckerlin wrote on Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 09:27:14 +0200:
> Hi
>
> I got a proprietary PKCS#11 library (for Post SuisseID smartcard) in
> /usr/lib/libcvP11.so.
>
> There is a configuration option �ssl-pkcs11-provider� in ~/.subversion/servers.
>
> But it is absolutely undocumented what this option is, even google doesn't find
> anything useful. The only documentation is: �Name of PKCS#11 provider to use�.
>
> How is the �Name of PKCS#11 provider� defined? It is *not* the name of the
> PKCS#11 library, so what is it?
>

If you build svn against neon 0.28 or greater, the value of that option
is passed is passed to ne_ssl_pkcs11_provider_init():
https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/branches/1.7.x/subversion/libsvn_ra_neon/session.c

However, current trunk no longer uses the ssl-pkcs11-provider option,
but still generates a config file that documents it. (The option was
originally added in r869495(r29421) by jorton for libsvn_ra_neon.
(Marc: libsvn_ra_neon is no longer supported in trunk/1.8-to-be; only
libsvn_ra_serf will be available for http/https access.))

We should at least update the config file that trunk generates. We
might want to teach libsvn_ra_serf to support that config option (for
compatibility reasons).

[Marc Wäckerlin]

Am Samstag, 25. August 2012, 17.35:50 schrieben Sie:

> += dev@, please drop users@ from replies

It's not a developper question, it's a usage question.
I am asking this as a user.


Sorry, but I don't understand your answer.

I build nothing, I install the packages from the ubuntu repository.

> If you build svn against neon 0.28 or greater, the value of that option
> is passed is passed to ne_ssl_pkcs11_provider_init():
> https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/branches/1.7.x/subversion/libsvn
> _ra_neon/session.c

I absolutely do not understand.

You have to specify what at compile time? That's absurd; how should the
package builder know what the users will need? And PKCS#11 libraries are
commonly loaded at runtime using dlopen, so there must surely be a way to
specify a library at runtime?!?

> However, current trunk no longer uses the ssl-pkcs11-provider option,
> but still generates a config file that documents it. (The option was
> originally added in r869495(r29421) by jorton for libsvn_ra_neon.
> (Marc: libsvn_ra_neon is no longer supported in trunk/1.8-to-be; only
> libsvn_ra_serf will be available for http/https access.))

So how is PKCS#11 specified now?

> We should at least update the config file that trunk generates. We
> might want to teach libsvn_ra_serf to support that config option (for
> compatibility reasons).

Again, the question is: How to specify /usr/lib/libcvP11.so (or any other
arbitray library) as PKCS#11 provider?


Does SVN work with PKCS#11 token?
If yes: How? (I mean at runtime.)


Thank you
Regards

[Lieven Govaerts]

On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 6:35 PM, Daniel Shahaf <d...@daniel.shahaf.name> wrote:
> += dev@, please drop users@ from replies
>

> Marc Wäckerlin wrote on Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 09:27:14 +0200:
>> Hi
>>
>> I got a proprietary PKCS#11 library (for Post SuisseID smartcard) in
>> /usr/lib/libcvP11.so.
>>
>> There is a configuration option «ssl-pkcs11-provider» in ~/.subversion/servers.
>>
>> But it is absolutely undocumented what this option is, even google doesn't find
>> anything useful. The only documentation is: «Name of PKCS#11 provider to use».
>>
>> How is the «Name of PKCS#11 provider» defined? It is *not* the name of the
>> PKCS#11 library, so what is it?
>>
>
> If you build svn against neon 0.28 or greater, the value of that option
> is passed is passed to ne_ssl_pkcs11_provider_init():
> https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/branches/1.7.x/subversion/libsvn_ra_neon/session.c
>
> However, current trunk no longer uses the ssl-pkcs11-provider option,
> but still generates a config file that documents it. (The option was
> originally added in r869495(r29421) by jorton for libsvn_ra_neon.
> (Marc: libsvn_ra_neon is no longer supported in trunk/1.8-to-be; only
> libsvn_ra_serf will be available for http/https access.))
>
> We should at least update the config file that trunk generates. We
> might want to teach libsvn_ra_serf to support that config option (for
> compatibility reasons).
>

This feature is currently missing from serf:
https://code.google.com/p/serf/issues/detail?id=27

I have this on my todo list somewhere, but currently working on other
serf-ssl related stuff.

[..]

Lievne

[Joe Orton]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 09:27:14AM +0200, Marc Wäckerlin wrote:
> Hi
>
> I got a proprietary PKCS#11 library (for Post SuisseID smartcard) in
> /usr/lib/libcvP11.so.
>
> There is a configuration option «ssl-pkcs11-provider» in ~/.subversion/servers.
>
> But it is absolutely undocumented what this option is, even google doesn't find
> anything useful. The only documentation is: «Name of PKCS#11 provider to use».
>
> How is the «Name of PKCS#11 provider» defined? It is *not* the name of the
> PKCS#11 library, so what is it?
> Everytthing I tried results in «unable to load PKCS#11 provider», e.g.:
>
> user@host:~/svn/project$ LANG= svn up
> svn: Invalid config: unable to load PKCS#11 provider '/usr/lib/libcvP11.so'
> user@host:~/svn/project$ ls -l /usr/lib/libcvP11.so
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5279688 Jul 6 14:30 /usr/lib/libcvP11.so

If you have neon built with pakchois support, it will try to load
"libFOO.so" or "FOO.so" for "ssl-pkcs11-provider = FOO", walking a
directory path which is by default /usr/lib/pkcs11 : /usr/lib.

So "ssl-pkcs11-provider = cvP11" should work for that PKCS#11 module.
This code has tested with a few software tokens and some hardware tokens
using OpenSC, but if there are problems with your token let me know.

Regards, Joe