Digital signature with Javascript

Question

So I'm stuck with this problem:

IE Edge no longer allow applets, activeX, etc. ,

and I have this applet that is used for digital signature,

the idea is to extract the private key from the KEY file in the client side, in that way the private key never leaves the client's computer, that is a requirement for security, it can't be avoid :(

I'm looking for APIs or frameworks, but I can't found a way to solve this,

with jsrsasign the examples uses a PEM file but my users have .CER + .KEY + password, in java I can do it, but I need to do it in javascript or in something on the client side.

and, reading the Web Cryptography API and some examples I found, they generate NEW private and public keys to sign BUT they never READ an existing CERTIFICATE

does anybody have this problem or know a framework I could use? please heeeelp!

Answer 1

So the answer was to use JSRSASIGN (http://kjur.github.io/jsrsasign/) in the examples posted in github it uses PEM files, I build an example to use CER+ KEY + PASSWORD >> https://github.com/alfredomova/firmaJs-with-jsrsasign-example,

for that specific example i used sparkMD5(https://github.com/satazor/SparkMD5) to calculate the file's hash.

Answer 2

Modern browsers no more supports ActiveX, applets. WebCrypto API generates and uses keys dynamically but does not have capability to access Certificates from Certificate Store.

The accepted answer provided by Alfredo M, who has also asked question, points to JavaScript to handle cryptography in browser which does not talk about accessing local Certificate Store. Recently Certificates are not being generated/issued as pfx (or PEM) files but on Cryptographic device like USB Token or smart card.

Thus we need to use Browser Extensions for modern browsers where application running behind the Browser can access Certificate Store and sign the hash. One such browser extension is provided free by my Company. You just need couple of lines of JavaScript code to call methods provided by any Browser Extension to achieve Digital Signing from modern Browser. If you just want to sign files or eReturns, you don't need any server side component. If you want to sign pdf, you may need pdf component on server side.