Dear libvirt Users, I'm seeking guidance on configuring TLS with libvirt to achieve perfect forward secrecy (PFS). While I followed the tutorial on setting up TLS with libvirt from the project wiki [1], I encountered an error when bringing up the legacy monolithic libvirt daemon.
The error message, "Certificate /etc/pki/libvirt/servercert.pem usage does not permit key encipherment," appeared even though I declared the "encryption_key" field in the certtool template file when generating the server certificate. Moreover, when I inspected the generated certificate with certtool, I discovered that it only had a "Digital signature" entry under X509v3 key usage. The deficiency in "Key Encipherment" usage could result from the key type specifications when generating the private key with the command "certtool --generate-privkey --key-type=ed25519 --curve=Ed25519 --sec-param=ultra > /etc/pki/libvirt/private/serverkey.pem". I prefer using elliptic-curve cryptography, specifically curve25519, over RSA, which the tutorial employs. Although a digital signature-only certificate can still perform Diffie–Hellman exchanges with ECDSA, it cannot encrypt client-generated pre-master secrets. Nonetheless, a TLS session can still be established without pre-master secrets, avoiding session key leakage even if the decryption key is compromised in the future. This fulfills the PFS requirement, and I believe that a certificate without "Key Encipherment" usage contributes to the system's overall security. Based on my understanding, I am seeking any insights or suggestions on whether there is a way to suppress the "certificate usage does not permit key encipherment" error and allow the legacy monolithic libvirt daemon to proceed. Thanks, Tommy.J.Mairo [1] https://wiki.libvirt.org/TLSSetup.html _______________________________________________ Users mailing list -- users@lists.libvirt.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-le...@lists.libvirt.org
