When is PrivateKey password used?

[Brent Putman]

On 6/11/13 1:40 PM, Cantor, Scott wrote:
>> When would the privatekey password actually be used?
> Probably if somebody used some PKCS11 hardware source for a key that required a password to decrypt.

Well, in theory maybe, but AFAIK we don't really support any kind of PKCS11 hardware there.

Probably more simply, this will be used if the private key is stored in the file an encrypted
format, as opposed to unencrypted.

E.g. if the PEM-encoded private key file content looks something like this, or similar:


-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
Proc-Type: 4,ENCRYPTED
DEK-Info: AES-128-CBC,F54D0AB902593C79860E99C646A67C9A

LY+uFoHj3yQ20ZR/PGOLU4IFiDgWnJnUGAFSGGCXwtI5NH0QrPon5BXK5q942gKh
<snip>
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----