# Initializing DSA keys

Eric Rescorla (ekr@rtfm.com)
Sat, 22 May 1999 17:27:26 -0700

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    Message-Id: <199905230027.RAA81397@romeo.rtfm.com>

    To: java-security@java.sun.com

    Subject: Initializing DSA keys

    Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 17:27:26 -0700

    From: Eric Rescorla <ekr@rtfm.com>

It's perfectly clear from the documentation how to generate
DSA keys, but that's not what people typically want to do.

What they want to do is to turn encoded public and private
keys (typically in PKCS1 or X.509 SubjectPublicKeyInfo)
form into usable keys in the application. Despite quite
a bit of grovelling through documentation, I can't figure
out how to do this with the provided JCA DSA implementation.

I don't insist at all that the interface allow me to use
encoded keys, I'm quite happy to break the keys up into
BigIntegers or whatever, but I can't figure out how to
insert externally generated keys _at all_. Surely this
must be possible. A pointer to appropriate documentation
would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,
-Ekr
[Eric Rescorla ekr@rtfm.com]

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