Programming

Hi all,

I have written a Java program to generate RSA public and private keys. I am writing the keys to a file and reading from it when required to encryption or decryption. I want to protect the private key file using a passphrase. Can anyone tell me how to do it?

Thanks.

I am not aware of Java API's which let you protect files with a password.

Why dont you use the Serializable interface of Java and serialize the private key ? See this tech tip from Sun.

Thanks.
I am able to persist the data. I just don't want anyone else to read the private key from the file. I am looking for something like PEM_write_RSAPrivateKey available in openssl for C. It has parameters to specify the passphrase and the passphrase needs to be correctly given while trying to read back. For Java I am using java.security package for generating keys and encrypting and decrypting. I could not find a function that uses a passphrase. I need an API that will write to a file and use a passphrase to protect the private key.