RSA_private_encrypt(3ssl)

RSA_private_encrypt3ssl

Low-level signature operations

Usage

 #include <openssl/rsa.h>

The following functions have been deprecated since OpenSSL 3.0, and can be hidden entirely by defining OPENSSL_API_COMPAT with a suitable version value, see openssl_user_macros(7):

 int RSA_private_encrypt(int flen, unsigned char *from,
                         unsigned char *to, RSA *rsa, int padding);
 int RSA_public_decrypt(int flen, unsigned char *from,
                        unsigned char *to, RSA *rsa, int padding);

Overview

Both of the functions described on this page are deprecated. Applications should instead use EVP_PKEY_sign_init_ex(3), EVP_PKEY_sign(3), EVP_PKEY_verify_recover_init(3), and EVP_PKEY_verify_recover(3).

These functions handle RSA signatures at a low-level.

RSA_private_encrypt() signs the flen bytes at from (usually a message digest with an algorithm identifier) using the private key rsa and stores the signature in to. to must point to RSA_size(rsa) bytes of memory.

padding denotes one of the following modes:

RSA_PKCS1_PADDING

PKCS #1 v1.5 padding. This function does not handle the algorithmIdentifier specified in PKCS #1. When generating or verifying PKCS #1 signatures, RSA_sign(3) and RSA_verify(3) should be used.

RSA_NO_PADDING

Raw RSA signature. This mode should only be used to implement cryptographically sound padding modes in the application code. Signing user data directly with RSA is insecure.

RSA_public_decrypt() recovers the message digest from the flen bytes long signature at from using the signer's public key rsa. to must point to a memory section large enough to hold the message digest (which is smaller than RSA_size(rsa) - 11). padding is the padding mode that was used to sign the data.

Return values

RSA_private_encrypt() returns the size of the signature (i.e., RSA_size(rsa)). RSA_public_decrypt() returns the size of the recovered message digest.

On error, -1 is returned; the error codes can be obtained by ERR_get_error(3).

Releases

13 releases since Debian 3.0 (Woody); the text changed 12 times.

  1. 3.0
  2. 3.1
  3. 4.0
  4. 5.0
  5. 6.0
  6. 7
  7. 8
  8. 9
  9. 10
  10. 11
  11. 12
  12. 13
  13. Arch

History

Both of these functions were deprecated in OpenSSL 3.0.

From openssl 3.6.5-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.