Problem creating self signed cert with ECDSA algorithm and using as client identity in native-tls

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
rust
Domain
cryptography, security

Research direction

Start by reproducing the get_identity entry point on macOS and inspect the values passed to native_tls::Identity::from_pkcs8, along with the generated certificate and private-key PEM. No project file or test is named; done means establishing whether the generated ECDSA identity can be loaded as a native-tls client identity and documenting or fixing the failure.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Hi everyone,

I am having trouble creating a self signed certificate with ECDSA that will be usable (on macOS) with native-tls as a client identity.

This is the code I have so far:

fn get_identity() -> Result<native_tls::Identity, String>
    let mut dn = DistinguishedName::new();
    dn.push(rcgen::DnType::OrganizationName, "Demo");
    dn.push(rcgen::DnType::CountryName, "DE");
    dn.push(rcgen::DnType::CommonName, "Demo");
    
    let mut cert_params = CertificateParams::default();
    cert_params.distinguished_name = dn;
    cert_params.serial_number = Option::Some(1);
    cert_params.alg = &rcgen::PKCS_ECDSA_P256_SHA256;
    cert_params.is_ca = rcgen::IsCa::Ca(rcgen::BasicConstraints::Unconstrained);

    let certificate = match Certificate::from_params(cert_params) {
        Ok(certificate) => certificate,
        Err(e) => return Err(e.to_string()),
    };

    let certificate = match Certificate::from_params(cert_params) {
        Ok(certificate) => certificate,
        Err(e) => return Err(e.to_string()),
    };

    let cert = match certificate.serialize_pem() {
        Ok(cert) => cert,
        Err(err) => return Err(format!("Error in serializing the cert pem: {}", err)),
    };
    let key = certificate.serialize_private_key_pem();
    
    match native_tls::Identity::from_pkcs8(cert.as_bytes(), key.as_bytes()) {
        Ok(identity) => return Ok(identity),
        Err(err) => {
            println!("Error in creating identity: {}", err);
        },
    };
}

The error I am getting from macOS security framework is:

Error in creating identity: Unknown format in import.

I got as far as identifying the issue being with the private key.

Is there anything I am doing completely wrong?

Thanks
Andreas

Dominant language
Rust
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