Bug #7074: OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new(public_key) fails if public_key doesn't have -----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----

• Status: Rejected
• Assignee: MartinBosslet (Martin Bosslet)
• Target version: 1.9.3
• ruby -v: ruby 1.9.3p194 (2012-04-20 revision 35410) [x86_64-darwin12.0.0]

[dlee (David Lee)]

=begin

public_key1 = <<KEY
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQCfW7fNVCLBii/Ky/H97w9BAL6H
ifRM9sJkxo1dqCzvYHLk/89OmYMoDJ2+OgHRaoRpP+CSHiTkxQR1G+UbHLiQpZMo
CbcHAN6nDVET5ulgA8xywOAuIEgsJ5CmhWG79rZGqDNg6N2V5jgZ8WgLRuTn6aGb
+HqF23BDbpOUX8pGcQIDAQAB
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
KEY

public_key2 = <<KEY
MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQCfW7fNVCLBii/Ky/H97w9BAL6H
ifRM9sJkxo1dqCzvYHLk/89OmYMoDJ2+OgHRaoRpP+CSHiTkxQR1G+UbHLiQpZMo
CbcHAN6nDVET5ulgA8xywOAuIEgsJ5CmhWG79rZGqDNg6N2V5jgZ8WgLRuTn6aGb
+HqF23BDbpOUX8pGcQIDAQAB
KEY

OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new public_key1 #=> works
OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new public_key2 #=> fails with error:

OpenSSL::PKey::RSAError: Neither PUB key nor PRIV key:: nested asn1 error

=end

[MartinBosslet (Martin Bosslet)]

• Category set to ext
• Status changed from Open to Rejected
• Assignee set to MartinBosslet (Martin Bosslet)

public_key2 is not a valid PEM format (the one in public_key1). It's valid Base64, true, but that's not what OpenSSL expects. It can deal with either DER- or PEM-encoded data. In my eyes, there's nothing wrong here, or did you mean something else? Unless you object, I would close this as "Rejected" to indicate that the behavior is intended and not a bug.

PS: A clean way to deal with raw Base64 data such as in public_key2 would be to Base64-decode it first and then passing it on as in your example.