Skip to content

crypto: fix public key encoding name in comment

Crypto encodings can be so needlessly confusing... :-)

PKCS#8 describes an encoding for private keys, not public keys. Using the name as a format usually refers to the PrivateKeyInfo structure it defines. (Or sometimes the EncryptedPrivateKeyInfo variant or the little-used OneAsymmetricKey extension defined in RFC 5958.) None of these structures can hold public keys to begin with.

d2i_PUBKEY actually parses the public key analogous format defined in X.509, SubjectPublicKeyInfo. This function already uses "X.509" to refer to an entire certificate, so say SubjectPublicKeyInfo in the comment.

(The abbreviation SPKI sometimes refers to SubjectPublicKeyInfo, e.g. in RFC 7469, but it can also an alternate S-expression-based PKI to X.509, Simple Public Key Infrastructure. To avoid confusion, stick with the expanded name.)

Checklist
  • make -j4 test (UNIX), or vcbuild test (Windows) passes
  • commit message follows commit guidelines

Merge request reports

Loading