Supported mechanisms for the PKCS #11 library for AWS CloudHSM Client SDK 5

• Encryption and decryption – AES-CBC, AES-CTR, AES-ECB, AES-GCM, DES3-CBC, DES3-ECB, RSA-OAEP, and RSA-PKCS

• Sign and verify – RSA, HMAC, and ECDSA; with and without hashing

• Hash/digest – SHA1, SHA224, SHA256, SHA384, and SHA512

• Key wrap – AES Key Wrap¹, AES-GCM, RSA-AES, and RSA-OAEP

• CKM_RSA_PKCS_KEY_PAIR_GEN

• CKM_RSA_X9_31_KEY_PAIR_GEN – This mechanism is functionally identical to the CKM_RSA_PKCS_KEY_PAIR_GEN mechanism, but offers stronger guarantees for p and q generation.

• CKM_EC_KEY_PAIR_GEN

• CKM_GENERIC_SECRET_KEY_GEN

• CKM_AES_KEY_GEN

• CKM_DES3_KEY_GEN – upcoming change listed in footnote 5.

• CKM_RSA_X_509

• CKM_RSA_PKCS – single-part operations only.

• CKM_RSA_PKCS_PSS – single-part operations only.

• CKM_SHA1_RSA_PKCS

• CKM_SHA224_RSA_PKCS

• CKM_SHA256_RSA_PKCS

• CKM_SHA384_RSA_PKCS

• CKM_SHA512_RSA_PKCS

• CKM_SHA512_RSA_PKCS

• CKM_SHA1_RSA_PKCS_PSS

• CKM_SHA224_RSA_PKCS_PSS

• CKM_SHA256_RSA_PKCS_PSS

• CKM_SHA384_RSA_PKCS_PSS

• CKM_SHA512_RSA_PKCS_PSS

• CKM_ECDSA – single-part operations only.

• CKM_ECDSA_SHA1

• CKM_ECDSA_SHA224

• CKM_ECDSA_SHA256

• CKM_ECDSA_SHA384

• CKM_ECDSA_SHA512

HMAC

• CKM_SHA_1_HMAC²

• CKM_SHA224_HMAC²

• CKM_SHA256_HMAC²

• CKM_SHA384_HMAC²

• CKM_SHA512_HMAC²

CMAC

• CKM_AES_CMAC

• CKM_SHA_1

• CKM_SHA224

• CKM_SHA256

• CKM_SHA384

• CKM_SHA512

• CKM_RSA_X_509

• CKM_RSA_PKCS – single-part operations only. Upcoming change listed in footnote 5.

• CKM_RSA_PKCS_OAEP – single-part operations only.

• CKM_AES_ECB

• CKM_AES_CTR

• CKM_AES_CBC

• CKM_AES_CBC_PAD

• CKM_DES3_CBC – upcoming change listed in footnote 5.

• CKM_DES3_ECB – upcoming change listed in footnote 5.

• CKM_DES3_CBC_PAD – upcoming change listed in footnote 5.

• CKM_AES_GCM ^{1, 2}

• CKM_CLOUDHSM_AES_GCM³

• CKM_SP800_108_COUNTER_KDF

• CKM_RSA_PKCS – single-part operations only. An upcoming change is listed in footnote 5.

• CKM_RSA_PKCS_OAEP⁴

• CKM_AES_GCM^{1, 3}

• CKM_CLOUDHSM_AES_GCM³

• CKM_RSA_AES_KEY_WRAP

• CKM_CLOUDHSM_AES_KEY_WRAP_NO_PAD³

• CKM_CLOUDHSM_AES_KEY_WRAP_PKCS5_PAD³

• CKM_CLOUDHSM_AES_KEY_WRAP_ZERO_PAD³

• [1] When performing AES-GCM encryption, the HSM does not accept initialization vector (IV) data from the application. You must use an IV that it generates. The 12-byte IV provided by the HSM is written into the memory reference pointed to by the pIV element of the CK_GCM_PARAMS parameters structure that you supply. To prevent user confusion, PKCS #11 SDK in version 1.1.1 and later ensures that pIV points to a zeroized buffer when AES-GCM encryption is initialized.

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• [2] When operating on data by using any of the following mechanisms, if the data buffer exceeds the maximum data size, the operation results in an error. For these mechanisms, all the data processing must occur inside the HSM. For information on maximum data size sets for each mechanism, refer to Maximum data size for each mechanism.

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• [3] Vendor-defined mechanism. In order to use the CloudHSM vendor defined mechanisms, PKCS#11 applications must include /opt/cloudhsm/include/pkcs11t.h during compilation.

  CKM_CLOUDHSM_AES_GCM: This proprietary mechanism is a programmatically safer alternative to the standard CKM_AES_GCM. It prepends the IV generated by the HSM to the ciphertext instead of writing it back into the CK_GCM_PARAMS structure that is provided during cipher initialization. You can use this mechanism with C_Encrypt, C_WrapKey, C_Decrypt, and C_UnwrapKey functions. When using this mechanism, the pIV variable in the CK_GCM_PARAMS struct must be set to NULL. When using this mechanism with C_Decrypt and C_UnwrapKey, the IV is expected to be prepended to the ciphertext that is being unwrapped.

  CKM_CLOUDHSM_AES_KEY_WRAP_PKCS5_PAD: AES Key Wrap with PKCS #5 Padding.

  CKM_CLOUDHSM_AES_KEY_WRAP_ZERO_PAD: AES Key Wrap with Zero Padding.

• [4] The following CK_MECHANISM_TYPE and CK_RSA_PKCS_MGF_TYPE are supported as CK_RSA_PKCS_OAEP_PARAMS for CKM_RSA_PKCS_OAEP:

  • CKM_SHA_1 using CKG_MGF1_SHA1

  • CKM_SHA224 using CKG_MGF1_SHA224

  • CKM_SHA256 using CKG_MGF1_SHA256

  • CKM_SHA384 using CKM_MGF1_SHA384

  • CKM_SHA512 using CKM_MGF1_SHA512

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• [5] In accordance with NIST guidance, this is disallowed for clusters in FIPS mode after 2023. For clusters in non-FIPS mode, it is still allowed after 2023. See FIPS 140 Compliance: 2024 Mechanism Deprecation for details.

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