java.security.SignatureException: Invalid encoding for signature. signature validated by Azure

Asaf Artsi :

When verifying a signature using Signature.verify I receive an "Invalid encoding for signature" exception. When verifying same signature using Azure service, the signature is verified.

I have a hash-data (SHA-256), a public key, and a signature that I'm trying to verify. The signature was received using com.microsoft.azure.keyvault.KeyVaultClient.sign method, with signing algorithm "ES256".

This works (using ES256 algorithm) :

    com.microsoft.azure.keyvault.KeyVaultClient keyVaultClient;
    String keyPairIdentifier;

    boolean verify(byte[] hashData, byte[] signature, JsonWebKeySignatureAlgorithm signingAlgorithm) {
        com.microsoft.azure.keyvault.models.KeyVerifyResult result = keyVaultClient.verify(keyPairIdentifier, signingAlgorithm, hashData, signature);
        return result.value().booleanValue();
    }

This fails (certificate holds same public key that is stored in Azure keyvault):

    Signature ecdsaSign = Signature.getInstance("SHA256withECDSA");
    ecdsaSign.initVerify(certificate.getPublicKey());
    ecdsaSign.update(hashData);
    ecdsaSign.verify(signature)

Expected result - true (signature is verified)

Actual result:

java.security.SignatureException: Could not verify signature
    at sun.security.ec.ECDSASignature.engineVerify(ECDSASignature.java:325)
    at java.security.Signature$Delegate.engineVerify(Signature.java:1222)
    at java.security.Signature.verify(Signature.java:655)
    at TestKV.KeyVault.VerifyDPSignature.verifySignatureUsingCertificate(VerifyDPSignature.java:143)
    at TestKV.KeyVault.VerifyDPSignature.main(VerifyDPSignature.java:104)
Caused by: java.security.SignatureException: Invalid encoding for signature
    at sun.security.ec.ECDSASignature.decodeSignature(ECDSASignature.java:400)
    at sun.security.ec.ECDSASignature.engineVerify(ECDSASignature.java:322)
    ... 4 more 
Caused by: java.io.IOException: Sequence tag error
    at sun.security.util.DerInputStream.getSequence(DerInputStream.java:330)
    at sun.security.ec.ECDSASignature.decodeSignature (ECDSASignature.java:376)

Asaf Artsi :

dave_thompson_085 - thanks! There were a few mistakes in the code you attached, the tags of the signature parts should be 0x02, not 0x30, and you didn't increase o after copying the first part. This is the code after the changes:

    byte[] r = new BigInteger(1,Arrays.copyOfRange(signature,0,32)).toByteArray();
    byte[] s = new BigInteger(1,Arrays.copyOfRange(signature,32,64)).toByteArray();
    byte[] der = new byte[6+r.length+s.length];
    der[0] = 0x30; // Tag of signature object
    der[1] = (byte)(der.length-2); // Length of signature object
    int o = 2;
    der[o++] = 0x02; // Tag of ASN1 Integer
    der[o++] = (byte)r.length; // Length of first signature part
    System.arraycopy (r,0, der,o, r.length);
    o += r.length;
    der[o++] = 0x02; // Tag of ASN1 Integer
    der[o++] = (byte)s.length; // Length of second signature part
    System.arraycopy (s,0, der,o, s.length);

After the format change I didn't get the "Sequence tag error" exception. But the verification still failed.

Thanks!