Internal format of RSA private keys in microsoft keystore.

[R.Sriram]

Greetings,

In the process of trying to work around some of the limitations
of the m$-CAPI API, I'm trying to decipher the internal representation
of private keys in the default m$ key store, in order to extract
the private key out.

The systems I'm working on are Win2K and XP, both on NTFS.

Google didn't give me much. Has anyone been able to figure out
the format of private key files? You can have a look at
C:/Documents and Settings/username/Application Data/Microsoft/
Crypto/RSA/*/filename

I'm trying this because CryptAcquireContext() dies with the error
NTE_BAD_KEYSET half the time. This is supposed to indicate that the
key container doesn't exist or it could be corrupted. At this point
I'm trying to see if the files are in good shape by reading them
out.

Having come from a Unix world, there may be something obvious I'm
missing out, so please have patience :)

Thanks,
Sriram.


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