(Visual Basic 6.0) Generate an RSA Key and Get as Base64 DER

Demonstrates how to generate a 2048-bit RSA key and return the public and private parts as unencrypted Base64 encoded DER.

Chilkat ActiveX Downloads ActiveX for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows

' This example assumes the Chilkat API to have been previously unlocked.
' See Global Unlock Sample for sample code.

Dim rsa As New ChilkatRsa

' Generate a 2048-bit key.  Chilkat RSA supports
Dim success As Long
success = rsa.GenerateKey(2048)
If (success <> 1) Then
    Debug.Print rsa.LastErrorText
    Exit Sub
End If

' Get the public part of the key.
Dim pubKey As PublicKey
Set pubKey = rsa.ExportPublicKeyObj()

' There are two possible formats for representing the RSA public key 
' in ASN.1 (DER).  The possible formats are PKCS1 and PKCS8.
' We can get either by setting bChoosePkcs1 to 1 or 0.
Dim bChoosePkcs1 As Long
bChoosePkcs1 = 1
Dim pubKeyBase64Der As String
pubKeyBase64Der = pubKey.GetEncoded(bChoosePkcs1,"base64")
Debug.Print "Public Key Base64 DER:"
Debug.Print pubKeyBase64Der

' Now get the private key as Base64 DER:
' Get the private part of the key.
' (Note: A public key is actually just a subset of the private key.  
'  If you have the private key, you also have the public key.
'  Thus Chilkat provides a method to get the public key from the private key.)
Dim privKey As PrivateKey
Set privKey = rsa.ExportPrivateKeyObj()

' Again, we can get PKCS1 or PKCS8, but with different methods:
Dim privKeyPkcs1 As String
privKeyPkcs1 = privKey.GetPkcs1ENC("base64")
Debug.Print "Private Key PKCS1 Base64 DER:"
Debug.Print privKeyPkcs1

Dim privKeyPkcs8 As String
privKeyPkcs8 = privKey.GetPkcs8ENC("base64")
Debug.Print "Private Key PKCS8 Base64 DER:"
Debug.Print privKeyPkcs8