C#: Exploring OpenSSL.NET

I am currently involved in a project module which involves a bit of cryptography. The basic requirements are:

• Generating RSA key pair
• Creating a CSR file
• Generating a Checksum
• Encrypting with private key
• Reading a certificate file
• Verifying a signature 

So while I was googling for hints, I came across this free library called OpenSSL.NET which looked promising. Find the code below which I use to accomplish the above tasks.

This function generates an RSA key pair and returns a CryptoKey object. The length of the keys are hard-coded to be 2048.

        /// <summary>
        /// Generates a 2048 bit RSA key pair.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>The key container</returns>
        public static CryptoKey GenerateRsaKeyPair()
        {
            using(var rsa = new RSA())
            {
                rsa.GenerateKeys(2048, 0x10021, null, null);
                return new CryptoKey(rsa);
            }
        }

The following function takes in a RSA key and creates a CSR file. I have used a DTO to pass in the additional details needed for the CSR generation.

        /// <summary>
        /// Generates a CSR file content according to the details given.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="csr">CSR details</param>
        /// /// <param name="key">RSA key</param>
        /// <returns>The CSR file content</returns>
        public static string GenerateCsr(CsrProperties csr, CryptoKey key)
        {
            using (var subject = new X509Name
                              {
                                  Country = csr.CountryName,
                                  Organization = csr.OrganizationName,
                                  OrganizationUnit = csr.OrganizationalUnitName,
                                  SerialNumber = csr.SerialNumber,
                                  Common = csr.CommonName
                              })
            {
                using (var req = new X509Request(0, subject, key))
                {
                    return req.PEM;
                }
            }
        }

For Checksum generation, which is also knowing as generating the hash, I used the following code. The algorithm was SHA256.

        /// <summary>
        /// Generates checksum using SHA256 algorithm.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="payLoad">Data to be used for hashing</param>
        /// <returns>The hash</returns>
        public static byte[] GenerateChecksum(byte[] payLoad)
        {
            using (var algo = new SHA256Managed())
            {
                return algo.ComputeHash(payLoad);
            }
        }

To do RSA encryption, I used .NET's native cryptography methods.

        /// <summary>
        /// Encrypts the data using RSA key.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="payLoad">Data to be encrypted</param>
        /// <param name="key">RSA key</param>
        /// <returns>The encrypted data</returns>
        public static byte[] Encrypt(byte[] payLoad, CryptoKey key)
        {
            using (var rsa = key.GetRSA())
            {
                return rsa.PrivateEncrypt(payLoad, RSA.Padding.PKCS1);
            }
        }

Well that's about it for now. I will update this with more functions as I move on.

Cheers!