--- title: JSEncrypt layout: default ---
When browsing the internet looking for a good solution to RSA Javascript encryption, there is a whole slew of libraries that basically take the fantastic work done by Tom Wu @ http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~tjw/jsbn/ and then modify that code to do what they want.
What I couldn't find, however, was a simple wrapper around this library that basically uses the library practically untouched, but adds a wrapper to provide parsing of actual Private and Public key-pairs generated with OpenSSL.
This library is the result of these efforts.
This library should work hand-in-hand with openssl. With that said, here is how to use this library.
openssl genrsa -out rsa_1024_priv.pem 1024
cat rsa_1024_priv.pem #if you are on mac you can | pbcopy to copy to the clipboard
openssl rsa -pubout -in rsa_1024_priv.pem -out rsa_1024_pub.pem
cat rsa_1024_pub.pem
// Create the encryption object and set the key.
var crypt = new JSEncrypt();
crypt.setKey(__YOUR_OPENSSL_PRIVATE_OR_PUBLIC_KEY__); //You can use also setPrivateKey and setPublicKey, they are both alias to setKey
//Eventhough the methods are called setPublicKey and setPrivateKey, remember
//that they are only alias to setKey, so you can pass them both a private or
//a public openssl key, just remember that setting a public key allows you to only encrypt.
var text = 'test';
// Encrypt the data with the public key.
var enc = crypt.encrypt(text);
// Now decrypt the crypted text with the private key.
var dec = crypt.decrypt(enc);
// Now a simple check to see if the round-trip worked.
if (dec === text){
alert('It works!!!');
} else {
alert('Something went wrong....');
}
This library heavily utilizes the wonderful work of Tom Wu found at http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~tjw/jsbn/.
This jsbn library was written using the raw variables to perform encryption. This is great for encryption, but most private keys use a Private Key in the PEM format seen below.
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----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-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
This library simply takes keys in the preceding format, and translates it to those variables needed to perform the encryptions used in Tom Wu's library.
Here are some good resources to investigate further.
With this information, we can translate a private key format to the variables required with the jsbn library from Tom Wu by using the following mappings.
modulus => n
public exponent => e
private exponent => d
prime1 => p
prime2 => q
exponent1 => dmp1
exponent2 => dmq1
coefficient => coeff