Section: User Commands (1)Updated: July 2009Local indexUp
NAME
rskeygen - generate private key pairs for TI graphing calculators
SYNOPSIS
rskeygen [ --secure ] [ --ti ]
[ --lengthnbytes ]
DESCRIPTION
rskeygen generates application and OS signing keys for the Texas
Instruments TI-73, TI-83 Plus, TI-84 Plus, TI-89, and TI-92 Plus
graphing calculators. These keys consist of two prime numbers p
and q as well as their product n. Current calculator
models impose a limit of 512 bits (64 bytes) on the size of n,
so p and q are generally about 256 bits each. As of this
writing this means factoring n is beyond the reach of most
people, though this will undoubtedly change in the future.
The keys generated by rskeygen are not very useful at the
moment, because in order for an application or OS to be accepted by
the calculator, the key used to sign it must itself be signed using
the calculator's own (possibly unique) private key, which is only
known to TI. Nevertheless, rskeygen is provided in the hope
that it can be useful, both for testing and for devising new signature
schemes based on TI's.
OPTIONS
--secure
Attempt to generate a ``secure'' key using the system's entropy pool,
/dev/random (see random(4).) The actual security is thus
dependent on your system's implementation of /dev/random.
Without --secure, the keys are generated based on the current
time and process ID, which is not secure in the slightest.
--ti
Generate keys which are palatable to TI's official app signing
programs. This forces p to be congruent to 3 and q to 7
modulo 8. This option is not necessary when using
rabbitsign(1), nor is it necessary for the calculator to
validate signatures properly.
--lengthnbytes
Specify the length in bytes of the modulus n; p and
q are each calculated to be approximately half this length.
This should not be greater than 64 for current calculators, and must
be less than 256 in any event due to a limitation of the key file
format.