Creating a DSA PublicKey in Java from a PEM string

Having created a DSA keypair using

ssh-keygen -t dsa

And then converting the public key part into pem format using

openssl dsa -in mytestkey -pubout

I then try to construct a PublicKey using the following:

            private static final String PUBLIC_KEY_PEM =
            "-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----\n" +
                    "MIIBtzCCASsGByqGSM44BAEwggEeAoGBAJLJRIrDdiwbB6iWZTWowprJB8QfbLK7\n" +
                    "8OUCoj6Ot5nfEL5VDPcc0v1rCGQxmL+nijPQsxA0LTucBySlkj6AvGIdND6yY7Qx\n" +
                    "OZYeP6UErByzVhmDNG2MIhK7SL36O3uutOJKr86aTiDxP8/zSUO8JPZHqtr2K2Cm\n" +
                    "lY6LQpocGnZ/AhUAmA/eq9AcGaNAqbT6ebB3IE3qWKkCgYAuh3zCz9aTPJ8+D9to\n" +
                    "6xjjE6SEqKM4EDaA8kpV/363ad8kZRLRmtxTGDpIKV/k4ebb94+4o6VEFJKTUH7t\n" +
                    "7c5uj8Hnr+8scctFE85nXprpK/CmxvWIZRl0AWjz1/8hoaUX3ZcLz9QbOLk1deSS\n" +
                    "BksFgKZQgoaNVY3PPq0pjNfdCAOBhQACgYEAkDATEoqoCXMOy/LK+TOBqXWu3Tex\n" +
                    "kkBMTJxYHyhXqmBLvvkiwBX1wz0i58Zg0Qde4euHXrYwYzufBXeMZ9p3Wku7VIwD\n" +
                    "4PfefBAZhzCJ+Dh937T/2dI/PqNIObZb28I7TXD/SQfwXurKDnGdl16LHmMcZ7bS\n" +
                    "d6AFgUd73b+Obh8=\n" +
                    "-----END PUBLIC KEY-----";
                    KeyFactory.getInstance("DSA").generatePublic(new X509EncodedKeySpec(PUBLIC_KEY_PEM.getBytes()));

However I get the following message:

Exception in thread "main" java.security.spec.InvalidKeySpecException: Inappropriate key specification: invalid key format
at sun.security.provider.DSAKeyFactory.engineGeneratePublic(DSAKeyFactory.java:119)
at java.security.KeyFactory.generatePublic(KeyFactory.java:334)
at com.dave.testing.RandomTesting.generatePublicKey2(RandomTesting.java:60)

Why is my code not correct?

Solution

Your key is currently encoded using base64. In order to read it using a X509EncodedKeySpec you need to decode it. You can use any Base64 decoder for this, I used the one provided by BouncyCastle for now. For this to work you need to strip it from the non-Base64 parts (the -----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY----- and -----END PUBLIC KEY----- lines respectively).

The following code snippet works using org.bouncycastle.util.encoders.Base64:

final String PUBLIC_KEY_PEM = "MIIBtzCCASsGByqGSM44BAEwggEeAoGBAJLJRIrDdiwbB6iWZTWowprJB8QfbLK7\n"
                                        + "8OUCoj6Ot5nfEL5VDPcc0v1rCGQxmL+nijPQsxA0LTucBySlkj6AvGIdND6yY7Qx\n"
                                        + "OZYeP6UErByzVhmDNG2MIhK7SL36O3uutOJKr86aTiDxP8/zSUO8JPZHqtr2K2Cm\n"
                                        + "lY6LQpocGnZ/AhUAmA/eq9AcGaNAqbT6ebB3IE3qWKkCgYAuh3zCz9aTPJ8+D9to\n"
                                        + "6xjjE6SEqKM4EDaA8kpV/363ad8kZRLRmtxTGDpIKV/k4ebb94+4o6VEFJKTUH7t\n"
                                        + "7c5uj8Hnr+8scctFE85nXprpK/CmxvWIZRl0AWjz1/8hoaUX3ZcLz9QbOLk1deSS\n"
                                        + "BksFgKZQgoaNVY3PPq0pjNfdCAOBhQACgYEAkDATEoqoCXMOy/LK+TOBqXWu3Tex\n"
                                        + "kkBMTJxYHyhXqmBLvvkiwBX1wz0i58Zg0Qde4euHXrYwYzufBXeMZ9p3Wku7VIwD\n"
                                        + "4PfefBAZhzCJ+Dh937T/2dI/PqNIObZb28I7TXD/SQfwXurKDnGdl16LHmMcZ7bS\n"
                                        + "d6AFgUd73b+Obh8=\n";
KeyFactory.getInstance("DSA").generatePublic(new X509EncodedKeySpec(Base64.decode(PUBLIC_KEY_PEM)));