[Freeipa-devel] [PATCH] 736-740 webui: various minor fixes

[Endi Sukma Dewata]

On 8/21/2014 7:18 AM, Simo Sorce wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-08-21 at 14:11 +0200, Petr Vobornik wrote:
>> On 13.8.2014 17:20, Endi Sukma Dewata wrote:
>>> 2. Can the UI parse the new key and display it the same way as other
>>> keys that are already saved? That will make it more seamless. 
>> Would be nice, but is it worth the effort? We would have to
>> reimplement ipapython.ssh into JavaScript + pull in crypto.js or other
>> lib for sha1and sha256 functions since Web Cryptography API is still
>> only a draft [1].
> I do not do this lightly, but you have my veto to do any crypto in
> javascript unless you convince me first it make sense.
>
> Simo.

Just to clarify, the point is to display some kind of information about 
the public keys the user just entered in the UI (that have not been 
saved) so that:
a) If user enters multiple keys at once, the user can distinguish which 
keys have been added rather than displaying a generic "New: key set" for 
all new keys.
b) The UI can detect if the key already exists on the server.
If this can be done without any cryptographic operations that would be 
great, but I'm not sure about the details.

For (a) I was wondering if the UI can decode the base-64 encoded public 
key entered by the user and display some user-friendly information about 
the key itself, maybe just the hexdump of the first few bytes of the 
key, or maybe the key type too if possible, or at least just the first 
few chars of the undecoded key.

For (b) the UI would have to use some crypto functions to generate the 
key fingerprints as generated by the server. But even if we do that, we 
are not doing any data encryption or dealing with secret information.

Alternatively, instead of displaying the fingerprints of the saved keys, 
the UI can display the first few bytes/chars of hexdump/encoded key to 
match (a) such that they can be compared without cryptography.

BTW, WebCrypto implementation has been making its way into Firefox:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiAcidBZRLxndE9LWEs2R1oxZ0xidUVoU3FQbFFobkE&usp=sharing

-- 
Endi S. Dewata