miekg/pkcs11

pkcs11 wrapper for Go

Go

451

333 commits

updated Aug 21, 2026

See the code

README

PKCS#11

This is a Go implementation of the PKCS#11 API. It wraps the library closely, but uses Go idiom where it makes sense. It has been tested with SoftHSM.

SoftHSM

  • Make it use a custom configuration file export SOFTHSM_CONF=$PWD/softhsm.conf

  • Then use softhsm to init it

    softhsm --init-token --slot 0 --label test --pin 1234
    
  • Then use libsofthsm2.so as the pkcs11 module:

    p := pkcs11.New("/usr/lib/softhsm/libsofthsm2.so")
    

Examples

A skeleton program would look somewhat like this (yes, pkcs#11 is verbose):

p := pkcs11.New("/usr/lib/softhsm/libsofthsm2.so")
err := p.Initialize()
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}

defer p.Destroy()
defer p.Finalize()

slots, err := p.GetSlotList(true)
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}

session, err := p.OpenSession(slots[0], pkcs11.CKF_SERIAL_SESSION|pkcs11.CKF_RW_SESSION)
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}
defer p.CloseSession(session)

err = p.Login(session, pkcs11.CKU_USER, "1234")
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}
defer p.Logout(session)

p.DigestInit(session, []*pkcs11.Mechanism{pkcs11.NewMechanism(pkcs11.CKM_SHA_1, nil)})
hash, err := p.Digest(session, []byte("this is a string"))
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}

for _, d := range hash {
        fmt.Printf("%x", d)
}
fmt.Println()

Further examples are included in the tests.

To expose PKCS#11 keys using the crypto.Signer interface, please see github.com/thalesignite/crypto11.

c
go
hsm
pkcs11
softhsm

miekg/pkcs11

pkcs11 wrapper for Go

Go

451

333 commits

updated Aug 21, 2026

See the code

README

PKCS#11

This is a Go implementation of the PKCS#11 API. It wraps the library closely, but uses Go idiom where it makes sense. It has been tested with SoftHSM.

SoftHSM

  • Make it use a custom configuration file export SOFTHSM_CONF=$PWD/softhsm.conf

  • Then use softhsm to init it

    softhsm --init-token --slot 0 --label test --pin 1234
    
  • Then use libsofthsm2.so as the pkcs11 module:

    p := pkcs11.New("/usr/lib/softhsm/libsofthsm2.so")
    

Examples

A skeleton program would look somewhat like this (yes, pkcs#11 is verbose):

p := pkcs11.New("/usr/lib/softhsm/libsofthsm2.so")
err := p.Initialize()
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}

defer p.Destroy()
defer p.Finalize()

slots, err := p.GetSlotList(true)
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}

session, err := p.OpenSession(slots[0], pkcs11.CKF_SERIAL_SESSION|pkcs11.CKF_RW_SESSION)
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}
defer p.CloseSession(session)

err = p.Login(session, pkcs11.CKU_USER, "1234")
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}
defer p.Logout(session)

p.DigestInit(session, []*pkcs11.Mechanism{pkcs11.NewMechanism(pkcs11.CKM_SHA_1, nil)})
hash, err := p.Digest(session, []byte("this is a string"))
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}

for _, d := range hash {
        fmt.Printf("%x", d)
}
fmt.Println()

Further examples are included in the tests.

To expose PKCS#11 keys using the crypto.Signer interface, please see github.com/thalesignite/crypto11.

c
go
hsm
pkcs11
softhsm

Project health

Overall

3.8/10

Maintained

0/10

Code review

6/10
OpenSSF Scorecard

Latest release

v1.1.2 · Jan 22, 2026

Releases this year

1

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973 followers · starred Feb 2022

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203 followers · starred May 2021