PrivateKey

AI-generated Key Takeaways

• PrivateKey is an interface that serves as a common type for all private key interfaces in Java security.

• It extends the Key and Destroyable interfaces, enabling key management and destruction for sensitive information.

• Implementations of PrivateKey are expected to provide methods for destroying and checking the destruction status of the key material.

• Specific cryptographic algorithms have their own private key interfaces, like RSAPrivateKey or DSAPrivateKey, which extend PrivateKey.

• Developers should be aware of serialization implications and ensure that destroyed keys are not serialized to maintain security.

public interface PrivateKey implements Key Destroyable

Known Indirect Subclasses DHPrivateKey, DSAPrivateKey, ECPrivateKey, RSAMultiPrimePrivateCrtKey, RSAPrivateCrtKey, RSAPrivateKey DHPrivateKey The interface to a Diffie-Hellman private key.  DSAPrivateKey The standard interface to a DSA private key.  ECPrivateKey The interface to an elliptic curve (EC) private key.  RSAMultiPrimePrivateCrtKey The interface to an RSA multi-prime private key, as defined in the PKCS#1 v2.1, using the Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) information values.  RSAPrivateCrtKey The interface to an RSA private key, as defined in the PKCS#1 standard, using the Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) information values.  RSAPrivateKey The interface to an RSA private key.

A private key. The purpose of this interface is to group (and provide type safety for) all private key interfaces.

Note: The specialized private key interfaces extend this interface. See, for example, the DSAPrivateKey interface in java.security.interfaces.

Implementations should override the default destroy and isDestroyed methods from the Destroyable interface to enable sensitive key information to be destroyed, cleared, or in the case where such information is immutable, unreferenced. Finally, since PrivateKey is Serializable, implementations should also override ObjectOutputStream.writeObject(java.lang.Object) to prevent keys that have been destroyed from being serialized.

See Also

• Key
• PublicKey
• ERROR(/Certificate)
• Signature.initVerify(PublicKey)
• DSAPrivateKey
• RSAPrivateKey
• RSAPrivateCrtKey

Constant Summary

long

serialVersionUID

The class fingerprint that is set to indicate serialization compatibility with a previous version of the class.

Inherited Constant Summary

From interface java.security.Key

long

serialVersionUID

The class fingerprint that is set to indicate serialization compatibility with a previous version of the class.

Inherited Method Summary

From interface java.security.Key

abstract String	getAlgorithm() Returns the standard algorithm name for this key.
abstract byte[]	getEncoded() Returns the key in its primary encoding format, or null if this key does not support encoding.
abstract String	getFormat() Returns the name of the primary encoding format of this key, or null if this key does not support encoding.

From interface javax.security.auth.Destroyable

void	destroy() Destroy this Object.
boolean	isDestroyed() Determine if this Object has been destroyed.

Constants

public static final long serialVersionUID

The class fingerprint that is set to indicate serialization compatibility with a previous version of the class.

Constant Value: 6034044314589513430