How do we convert a String from PEM to DER format

Question

Have a String being sent from in the below format:

-----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY-----
MIGHAoGBANAahj75ZIz9nXqW2H83nGcUao4wNyYZ9Z1kiNTUYQl7ob/RBmDzs5rY
mUahXAg0qyS7+a55eU/csShf5ATGzAXv+DDPcz8HrSTcHMEFpuyYooX6PrIZ07Ma
XtsJ2J4mhlySI5uOZVRDoaFY53MPQx5gud2quDz759IN/0gnDEEVAgED
-----END RSA PUBLIC KEY-----

How do i construct a PublicKey Object from this string ? Have tried the below Remove the header and footer and base64 decode the buffer

public static PublicKey getFromString(String keystr) throws Exception
  {
  //String S1= asciiToHex(keystr);
   byte[] keyBytes = new sun.misc.BASE64Decoder().decodeBuffer(keystr);
   X509EncodedKeySpec spec =
       new X509EncodedKeySpec(keyBytes);
     KeyFactory kf = KeyFactory.getInstance("RSA");
     return kf.generatePublic(spec);

  }

This fails either as an invalid key format or will get below error

java.security.spec.InvalidKeySpecException: java.security.InvalidKeyException: IOException: algid parse error, not a sequence
 at sun.security.rsa.RSAKeyFactory.engineGeneratePublic(RSAKeyFactory.java:188)
 at java.security.KeyFactory.generatePublic(KeyFactory.java:304)
 at PublicKeyReader.getFromString(PublicKeyReader.java:30)
 at Tst.main(Tst.java:36)

The Key is being generated thro the API of openSSL PEM_write_bio_RSAPublicKey(bio, rsa);

Answer 1

by calling PEM_write_bio_RSAPublicKey only the key modulus and public exponent are encoded into the output PEM data. However the X509EncodedKeySpec is expected this ASN.1 key format:

 SubjectPublicKeyInfo ::= SEQUENCE {
   algorithm AlgorithmIdentifier,
   subjectPublicKey BIT STRING }

You should use the PEM_write_bio_PUBKEY function which encodes the public key using the SubjectPublicKeyInfo structure which as expected by X509EncodedKeySpec

An other possible solution to decode the key. Unfortunately I don't think it is possible to do only with the standard JDK API but it can be done with the Bouncycastle library

import org.bouncycastle.asn1.*;
import org.bouncycastle.asn1.x509.RSAPublicKeyStructure;

public static PublicKey getFromString(String keystr) throws Exception
{
  //String S1= asciiToHex(keystr);
   byte[] keyBytes = new sun.misc.BASE64Decoder().decodeBuffer(keystr);
   ASN1InputStream in = new ASN1InputStream(keyBytes);
   DERObject obj = in.readObject();
   RSAPublicKeyStructure pStruct = RSAPublicKeyStructure.getInstance(obj);
   RSAPublicKeySpec spec = new RSAPublicKeySpec(pStrcut.getModulus(), pStruct.getPublicExponent());
   KeyFactory kf = KeyFactory.getInstance("RSA");
   return kf.generatePublic(spec);
}

Answer 2

BouncyCastle's PEMReader will do this for you:

String pemKey = "-----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY-----\n"
            + "MIGHAoGBANAahj75ZIz9nXqW2H83nGcUao4wNyYZ9Z1kiNTUYQl7ob/RBmDzs5rY\n"
            + "mUahXAg0qyS7+a55eU/csShf5ATGzAXv+DDPcz8HrSTcHMEFpuyYooX6PrIZ07Ma\n"
            + "XtsJ2J4mhlySI5uOZVRDoaFY53MPQx5gud2quDz759IN/0gnDEEVAgED\n"
            + "-----END RSA PUBLIC KEY-----\n";
PEMReader pemReader = new PEMReader(new StringReader(pemKey));
RSAPublicKey rsaPubKey = (RSAPublicKey) pemReader.readObject();
System.out.println("Public key: "+rsaPubKey);

(Note that you may need Security.addProvider(new BouncyCastleProvider()); somewhere before.)

Answer 3

UPDATE: greatly simplified process and code thanks to @dave_thompson_085

You can construct a PublicKey Object from the string you provided as follows:

1. Reading the Subject Public Key Information (SPKI) from binary DER (using Bouncy Castle's PEMParser)
2. Feeding the SPKI into a converter to get the PublicKey (Bouncy's Castle's JcaPEMKeyConverter works)

Pre-reqs for my solution:

1. Java 7+ (or you'll need to manually unroll the try-with-resources)
2. Bouncy Castle bcprov-jdk15on 1.51 or later (does NOT run on 1.50 or earlier, does not compile on 1.47 or earlier)

Full working Java 7+ example:

import org.bouncycastle.asn1.x509.SubjectPublicKeyInfo;
import org.bouncycastle.openssl.PEMParser;
import org.bouncycastle.openssl.jcajce.JcaPEMKeyConverter;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.StringReader;
import java.security.PublicKey;

public interface PemToDer
{
    static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        createRsaPublicKey(
                "-----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY-----\n" +
                "MIGHAoGBANAahj75ZIz9nXqW2H83nGcUao4wNyYZ9Z1kiNTUYQl7ob/RBmDzs5rY\n" +
                "mUahXAg0qyS7+a55eU/csShf5ATGzAXv+DDPcz8HrSTcHMEFpuyYooX6PrIZ07Ma\n" +
                "XtsJ2J4mhlySI5uOZVRDoaFY53MPQx5gud2quDz759IN/0gnDEEVAgED\n" +
                "-----END RSA PUBLIC KEY-----"
        );
    }

    static PublicKey createRsaPublicKey(String keystr) throws IOException {
        try (StringReader reader = new StringReader(keystr);
             PEMParser pemParser = new PEMParser(reader)) {
            SubjectPublicKeyInfo subjectPublicKeyInfo = (SubjectPublicKeyInfo) pemParser.readObject();
            JcaPEMKeyConverter pemKeyConverter = new JcaPEMKeyConverter();
            return pemKeyConverter.getPublicKey(subjectPublicKeyInfo);
        }
    }
}