Does Microsoft Provides a PKCS #11 provider that connects to its own MS CryptoAPI?

Question

I'm looking to run some tests using the PKCS #11 interface and was wondering if Microsoft provided a software based implementation the provides PKCS #11 functionality?

Rather then waiting for a HSM to arrive and be properly configured I'd rather get started on testing interaction with the interface now.

Pyralid

Answer 1

Microsoft does not. Microsoft has rejected PKCS11 in favor of the smart card minidriver/base smart card CSP. However, you can get smart cards with PKCS11 support from many vendors that will allow you to test code. Some even have "softtokens" that emulate a smart card. Note that most smartcards are quite limited as to what they support relative to a full HSM.

Faircloth

Answer 2

It´s not provided by Microsoft but you can use third parties implementations, for example:

• p11-capi
• pvpkcs11

Smalls

"p11-capi is a module that allows Firefox (and possibly other applications) to talk to smartcards (or other cryptographic tokens) on Microsoft Windows computers" <- it seems not a software-only based implementation. – Kassia