Upgrade to OTP 18 breaks usage of public_key library - erlang

Question

Building a pem file in Elixir requires several steps, including building an entity. In OTP 17, the following works:
{public, private} = :crypto.generate_key(:ecdh, :secp256k1)
ec_entity = {:ECPrivateKey,
1,
:binary.bin_to_list(private),
{:namedCurve, {1, 3, 132, 0, 10}},
{0, public}}
der_encoded = :public_key.der_encode(:ECPrivateKey, ec_entity)
pem = public_key.pem_encode([{:ECPrivateKey, der_encoded, :not_encrypted}])
But using OTP 18, the following error occurs:
{public, private} = :crypto.generate_key(:ecdh, :secp256k1)
ec_entity = {:ECPrivateKey,
1,
:binary.bin_to_list(private),
{:namedCurve, {1, 3, 132, 0, 10}},
{0, public}}
der_encoded = :public_key.der_encode(:ECPrivateKey, ec_entity)
** (MatchError) no match of right hand side value: {:error, {:asn1, :badarg}}
public_key.erl:253: :public_key.der_encode/2
What is the source of this error?

Answer 1

The source of the error is a change in the way that the public_key entity is constructed between OTP 17 and OTP 18. If we reverse the process, starting with a pem file, we can see the difference.
OTP 17:
iex(6)> pem = "-----BEGIN EC PRIVATE KEY-----\nMHQCAQEEIJniJF4vtTqE4wS5AkhmMZsHIbil0l3XfRButkw5IJYFoAcGBSuBBAAK\noUQDQgAEtxm+jijBB0JxZTceHnCHE0HpMXJp1ScVUZ5McvDUVsS/Dek8IdAsMOPz\nnnVALflZzXtH/wU9p2LrFdJeuXwL8g==\n-----END EC PRIVATE KEY-----\n\n"
"-----BEGIN EC PRIVATE KEY-----\nMHQCAQEEIJniJF4vtTqE4wS5AkhmMZsHIbil0l3XfRButkw5IJYFoAcGBSuBBAAK\noUQDQgAEtxm+jijBB0JxZTceHnCHE0HpMXJp1ScVUZ5McvDUVsS/Dek8IdAsMOPz\nnnVALflZzXtH/wU9p2LrFdJeuXwL8g==\n-----END EC PRIVATE KEY-----\n\n"
iex(7)> [{type, decoded, _}] = :public_key.pem_decode(pem)
[{:ECPrivateKey,
<<48, 116, 2, 1, 1, 4, 32, 153, 226, 36, 94, 47, 181, 58, 132, 227, 4, 185, 2, 72, 102, 49, 155, 7, 33, 184, 165, 210, 93, 215, 125, 16, 110, 182, 76, 57, 32, 150, 5, 160, 7, 6, 5, 43, 129, 4, 0, 10, ...>>,
:not_encrypted}]
iex(8)> :public_key.der_decode(type, decoded)
{:ECPrivateKey, 1,
[153, 226, 36, 94, 47, 181, 58, 132, 227, 4, 185, 2, 72, 102, 49, 155, 7, 33,
184, 165, 210, 93, 215, 125, 16, 110, 182, 76, 57, 32, 150, 5],
{:namedCurve, {1, 3, 132, 0, 10}},
{0,
<<4, 183, 25, 190, 142, 40, 193, 7, 66, 113, 101, 55, 30, 30, 112, 135, 19, 65, 233, 49, 114, 105, 213, 39, 21, 81, 158, 76, 114, 240, 212, 86, 196, 191, 13, 233, 60, 33, 208, 44, 48, 227, 243, 158, 117, ...>>}}
OTP 18:
iex(5)> [{type, decoded, _}] = :public_key.pem_decode(pem)
[{:ECPrivateKey,
<<48, 116, 2, 1, 1, 4, 32, 153, 226, 36, 94, 47, 181, 58, 132, 227, 4, 185, 2, 72, 102, 49, 155, 7, 33, 184, 165, 210, 93, 215, 125, 16, 110, 182, 76, 57, 32, 150, 5, 160, 7, 6, 5, 43, 129, 4, 0, 10, ...>>,
:not_encrypted}]
iex(6)> entity = :public_key.der_decode(type, decoded)
{:ECPrivateKey, 1,
<<153, 226, 36, 94, 47, 181, 58, 132, 227, 4, 185, 2, 72, 102, 49, 155, 7, 33, 184, 165, 210, 93, 215, 125, 16, 110, 182, 76, 57, 32, 150, 5>>,
{:namedCurve, {1, 3, 132, 0, 10}},
<<4, 183, 25, 190, 142, 40, 193, 7, 66, 113, 101, 55, 30, 30, 112, 135, 19, 65, 233, 49, 114, 105, 213, 39, 21, 81, 158, 76, 114, 240, 212, 86, 196, 191, 13, 233, 60, 33, 208, 44, 48, 227, 243, 158, 117, 64, ...>>}
The difference is in how the public and private keys are represented.
The signature of an ECPrivateKey Record is:
ECPrivateKey'{ version, privateKey, parameters, publicKey}
In Erlang 18, both values are represented at plain binaries, in 17, the private key is a list and the public key is part of a tuple, {0, binary}.
So in order to build the pem file correctly, the entity representation has to change.
{public, private} = :crypto.generate_key(:ecdh, :secp256k1)
entity = {:ECPrivateKey,
1,
private,
{:namedCurve, {1, 3, 132, 0, 10}},
public}
Using the new representation of the record will solve the problem.

Answer 2

I didn't really check why your version works on some versions, but I've got some code that works on all these erlang versions: 19.0, 18.2.1, 18.1, 18.0, 17.5, R16B03 (running on travis).
-include_lib("public_key/include/public_key.hrl").
genPEMKey() ->
CurveId = secp256k1,
{PubKey, PrivKey} = crypto:generate_key(ecdh, CurveId),
Key = #'ECPrivateKey'{version = 1,
privateKey = PrivKey,
parameters = {
namedCurve,
pubkey_cert_records:namedCurves(CurveId)},
publicKey = PubKey},
DERKey = public_key:der_encode('ECPrivateKey', Key),
public_key:pem_encode([{'ECPrivateKey', DERKey, not_encrypted}]).
This piece of code was based on the examples found in the OTP codebase:
https://github.com/erlang/otp/blob/master/lib/public_key/test/erl_make_certs.erl#L407