python-pkcs11 with the Nitrokey HSM - Blog of Danielle

So my Nitrokey HSM arrived and it works great, thanks to the Nitrokey peeps for sending me one.

Because the OpenSC PKCS #11 module is a little more lightweight than some of the other vendors, which often implement mechanisms that are not actually supported by the hardware (e.g. the Opencryptoki TPM module), I wrote up some documentation on how to use the device, focusing on how to extract the public keys for using outside of PKCS #11, as the Nitrokey doesn’t implement any of the public key functions.