Retrieve SecKey from NSData

Question

I encountered an issue with creating SecKey from NSData. Basically my client-server communication is based on signature created with private key and verified on the server with public key.

I am implementing session transfer between two devices and in order to continue communication I need those keys to be transferred as well. I am converting SecKey to NSData and sending it via bluetooth, but on other side I cannot convert NSData to SecKey back to use encryption.

Could you help please?

Answer 1

More complete example (swift 4, iOS 10+) - assuming you have a Base64 encoded string. Note that the other side of the connection needs to also be creating key payloads using the same format (i.e. RSA - PKCS #1, also verify key size ). This function handles public or private keys (security caveats omitted for brevity).

// Extract secKey from encoded string - defaults to extracting public keys
func decodeSecKeyFromBase64(encodedKey: String, isPrivate: Bool = false) -> SecKey? {
    var keyClass = kSecAttrKeyClassPublic
    if isPrivate {
        keyClass = kSecAttrKeyClassPrivate
    }
    let attributes: [String:Any] =
    [
        kSecAttrKeyClass as String: keyClass,
        kSecAttrKeyType as String: kSecAttrKeyTypeRSA,
        kSecAttrKeySizeInBits as String: 2048,
    ]

    guard let secKeyData = Data.init(base64Encoded: encodedKey) else {
        print("Error: invalid encodedKey, cannot extract data")
        return nil
    }
    guard let secKey = SecKeyCreateWithData(secKeyData as CFData, attributes as CFDictionary, nil) else {
        print("Error: Problem in SecKeyCreateWithData()")
        return nil
    }

    return secKey
}