NAME

Convert::BER::XS - very low level BER en-/decoding

SYNOPSIS

 use Convert::BER::XS ':all';

 my $ber = ber_decode $buf, $Convert::BER::XS::SNMP_PROFILE
    or die "unable to decode SNMP message";

 # The above results in a data structure consisting of
 #    (class, tag, flags, data)
 # tuples. Below is such a message, SNMPv1 trap
 # with a Cisco mac change notification.
 # Did you know that Cisco is in the news almost
 # every week because of some backdoor password
 # or other extremely stupid security bug?

 [ ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_SEQUENCE, 1,
   [
      [ ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_INTEGER, 0, 0 ], # snmp version 1
      [ ASN_UNIVERSAL, 4, 0, "public" ], # community
      [ ASN_CONTEXT, 4, 1, # CHOICE, constructed - trap PDU
         [
            [ ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_OBJECT_IDENTIFIER, 0, "1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.215.2" ], # enterprise oid
            [ ASN_APPLICATION, SNMP_IPADDRESS, 0, "10.0.0.1" ], # SNMP IpAddress
            [ ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_INTEGER, 0, 6 ], # generic trap
            [ ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_INTEGER, 0, 1 ], # specific trap
            [ ASN_APPLICATION, SNMP_TIMETICKS, 0, 1817903850 ], # SNMP TimeTicks
            [ ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_SEQUENCE, 1, # the varbindlist
               [
                  [ ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_SEQUENCE, 1, # a single varbind, "key value" pair
                     [
                        [ ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_OBJECT_IDENTIFIER, 0, "1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.215.1.1.8.1.2.1" ],
                        [ ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_OCTET_STRING, 0, "...data..." # the value
                        ]
                     ]
                  ],
                  ...
 # let's dump it, for debugging

 ber_dump $ber, $Convert::BER::XS::SNMP_PROFILE;

 # let's decode it a bit with some helper functions

 my $msg = ber_is_seq $ber
    or die "SNMP message does not start with a sequence";

 ber_is $msg->[0], ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_INTEGER, 0
    or die "SNMP message does not start with snmp version\n";

 # message is SNMP v1 or v2c?
 if ($msg->[0][BER_DATA] == 0 || $msg->[0][BER_DATA] == 1) {

    # message is v1 trap?
    if (ber_is $msg->[2], ASN_CONTEXT, 4, 1) {
       my $trap = $msg->[2][BER_DATA];

       # check whether trap is a cisco mac notification mac changed message
       if (
          (ber_is_oid $trap->[0], "1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.215.2") # cmnInterfaceObjects
          and (ber_is_int $trap->[2], 6)
          and (ber_is_int $trap->[3], 1) # mac changed msg
       ) {
          ... and so on

 # finally, let's encode it again and hope it results in the same bit pattern

 my $buf = ber_encode $ber, $Convert::BER::XS::SNMP_PROFILE;

DESCRIPTION

WARNING: Before release 1.0, the API is not considered stable in any way.

This module implements a very low level BER/DER en-/decoder.

It is tuned for low memory and high speed, while still maintaining some level of user-friendlyness.

EXPORT TAGS AND CONSTANTS

By default this module doesn't export any symbols, but if you don't want to break your keyboard, editor or eyesight with extremely long names, I recommend importing the :all tag. Still, you can selectively import things.

:all

All of the below. Really. Recommended for at least first steps, or if you don't care about a few kilobytes of wasted memory (and namespace).

:const

All of the strictly ASN.1-related constants defined by this module, the same as :const_asn :const_index. Notably, this does not contain :const_ber_type and :const_snmp.

A good set to get everything you need to decode and match BER data would be :decode :const.

:const_index

The BER tuple array index constants:

        BER_CLASS BER_TAG BER_FLAGS BER_DATA

:const_asn

ASN class values (these are 0, 1, 2 and 3, respectively - exactly the two topmost bits from the identifier octet shifted 6 bits to the right):

      ASN_UNIVERSAL ASN_APPLICATION ASN_CONTEXT ASN_PRIVATE

ASN tag values (some of which are aliases, such as ASN_OID). Their numerical value corresponds exactly to the numbers used in BER/X.690.

      ASN_BOOLEAN ASN_INTEGER ASN_BIT_STRING ASN_OCTET_STRING ASN_NULL ASN_OID
      ASN_OBJECT_IDENTIFIER ASN_OBJECT_DESCRIPTOR ASN_EXTERNAL ASN_REAL ASN_SEQUENCE ASN_ENUMERATED
      ASN_EMBEDDED_PDV ASN_UTF8_STRING ASN_RELATIVE_OID ASN_SET ASN_NUMERIC_STRING
      ASN_PRINTABLE_STRING ASN_TELETEX_STRING ASN_T61_STRING ASN_VIDEOTEX_STRING ASN_IA5_STRING
      ASN_ASCII_STRING ASN_UTC_TIME ASN_GENERALIZED_TIME ASN_GRAPHIC_STRING ASN_VISIBLE_STRING
      ASN_ISO646_STRING ASN_GENERAL_STRING ASN_UNIVERSAL_STRING ASN_CHARACTER_STRING ASN_BMP_STRING

:const_ber_type

The BER type constants, explained in the PROFILES section.

      BER_TYPE_BYTES BER_TYPE_UTF8 BER_TYPE_UCS2 BER_TYPE_UCS4 BER_TYPE_INT
      BER_TYPE_OID BER_TYPE_RELOID BER_TYPE_NULL BER_TYPE_BOOL BER_TYPE_REAL
      BER_TYPE_IPADDRESS BER_TYPE_CROAK

:const_snmp

Constants only relevant to SNMP. These are the tag values used by SNMP in the ASN_APPLICATION namespace and have the exact numerical value as in BER/RFC 2578.

      SNMP_IPADDRESS SNMP_COUNTER32 SNMP_UNSIGNED32 SNMP_GAUGE32
      SNMP_TIMETICKS SNMP_OPAQUE SNMP_COUNTER64

:decode

ber_decode and the match helper functions:

      ber_decode ber-decode_prefix
      ber_is ber_is_seq ber_is_int ber_is_oid
      ber_dump

:encode

ber_encode and the construction helper functions:

      ber_encode
      ber_int

ASN.1/BER/DER/... BASICS

ASN.1 is a strange language that can be used to describe protocols and data structures. It supports various mappings to JSON, XML, but most importantly, to a various binary encodings such as BER, that is the topic of this module, and is used in SNMP, LDAP or X.509 for example.

While ASN.1 defines a schema that is useful to interpret encoded data, the BER encoding is actually somewhat self-describing: you might not know whether something is a string or a number or a sequence or something else, but you can nevertheless decode the overall structure, even if you end up with just a binary blob for the actual value.

This works because BER values are tagged with a type and a namespace, and also have a flag that says whether a value consists of subvalues (is "constructed") or not (is "primitive").

Tags are simple integers, and ASN.1 defines a somewhat weird assortment of those - for example, you have one integers and 16(!) different string types, but there is no Unsigned32 type for example. Different applications work around this in different ways, for example, SNMP defines application-specific Gauge32, Counter32 and Unsigned32, which are mapped to two different tags: you can distinguish between Counter32 and the others, but not between Gause32 and Unsigned32, without the ASN.1 schema.

Ugh.

DECODED BER REPRESENTATION

This module represents every BER value as a 4-element tuple (actually an array-reference):

   [CLASS, TAG, FLAGS, DATA]

For example:

   [ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_INTEGER, 0, 177]       # the integer 177
   [ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_OCTET_STRING, 0, "john"] # the string "john"
   [ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_OID, 0, "1.3.6.133"]     # some OID
   [ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_SEQUENCE, 1, [ [ASN_UNIVERSAL... # a sequence

To avoid non-descriptive hardcoded array index numbers, this module defines symbolic constants to access these members: BER_CLASS, BER_TAG, BER_FLAGS and BER_DATA.

Also, the first three members are integers with a little caveat: for performance reasons, these are readonly and shared, so you must not modify them (increment, assign to them etc.) in any way. You may modify the DATA member, and you may re-assign the array itself, e.g.:

   $ber = ber_decode $binbuf;

   # the following is NOT legal:
   $ber->[BER_CLASS] = ASN_PRIVATE; # ERROR, CLASS/TAG/FLAGS are READ ONLY(!)

   # but all of the following are fine:
   $ber->[BER_DATA] = "string";
   $ber->[BER_DATA] = [ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_INTEGER, 0, 123];
   @$ber = (ASN_APPLICATION, SNMP_TIMETICKS, 0, 1000);

CLASS is something like a namespace for TAGs - there is the ASN_UNIVERSAL namespace which defines tags common to all ASN.1 implementations, the ASN_APPLICATION namespace which defines tags for specific applications (for example, the SNMP Unsigned32 type is in this namespace), a special-purpose context namespace (ASN_CONTEXT, used e.g. for CHOICE) and a private namespace (ASN_PRIVATE).

The meaning of the TAG depends on the namespace, and defines a (partial) interpretation of the data value. For example, SNMP defines extra tags in the ASN_APPLICATION namespace, and to take full advantage of these, you need to tell this module how to handle those via profiles.

The most common tags in the ASN_UNIVERSAL namespace are ASN_INTEGER, ASN_BIT_STRING, ASN_NULL, ASN_OCTET_STRING, ASN_OBJECT_IDENTIFIER, ASN_SEQUENCE, ASN_SET and ASN_IA5_STRING.

The most common tags in SNMP's ASN_APPLICATION namespace are SNMP_COUNTER32, SNMP_UNSIGNED32, SNMP_TIMETICKS and SNMP_COUNTER64.

The FLAGS value is really just a boolean at this time (but might get extended) - if it is 0, the value is "primitive" and contains no subvalues, kind of like a non-reference perl scalar. If it is 1, then the value is "constructed" which just means it contains a list of subvalues which this module will en-/decode as BER tuples themselves.

The DATA value is either a reference to an array of further tuples (if the value is FLAGS), some decoded representation of the value, if this module knows how to decode it (e.g. for the integer types above) or a binary string with the raw octets if this module doesn't know how to interpret the namespace/tag.

Thus, you can always decode a BER data structure and at worst you get a string in place of some nice decoded value.

See the SYNOPSIS for an example of such an encoded tuple representation.

DECODING AND ENCODING

$tuple = ber_decode $bindata[, $profile]

Decodes binary BER data in $bindata and returns the resulting BER tuple. Croaks on any decoding error, so the returned $tuple is always valid.

How tags are interpreted is defined by the second argument, which must be a Convert::BER::XS::Profile object. If it is missing, the default profile will be used ($Convert::BER::XS::DEFAULT_PROFILE).

In addition to rolling your own, this module provides a $Convert::BER::XS::SNMP_PROFILE that knows about the additional SNMP types.

Example: decode a BER blob using the default profile - SNMP values will be decided as raw strings.

   $tuple = ber_decode $data;

Example: as above, but use the provided SNMP profile.

   $tuple = ber_encode $data, $Convert::BER::XS::SNMP_PROFILE;

($tuple, $bytes) = ber_decode_prefix $bindata[, $profile]

Works like ber_decode, except it doesn't croak when there is data after the BER data, but instead returns the decoded value and the number of bytes it decoded.

This is useful when you have BER data at the start of a buffer and other data after, and you need to find the length.

Also, since BER is self-delimited, this can be used to decode multiple BER values joined together.

$bindata = ber_encode $tuple[, $profile]

Encodes the BER tuple into a BER/DER data structure. As with Cyber_decode>, an optional profile can be given.

The encoded data should be both BER and DER ("shortest form") compliant unless the input says otherwise (e.g. it uses constructed strings).

HELPER FUNCTIONS

Working with a 4-tuple for every value can be annoying. Or, rather, is annoying. To reduce this a bit, this module defines a number of helper functions, both to match BER tuples and to construct BER tuples:

MATCH HELPERS

These functions accept a BER tuple as first argument and either partially or fully match it. They often come in two forms, one which exactly matches a value, and one which only matches the type and returns the value.

They do check whether valid tuples are passed in and croak otherwise. As a ease-of-use exception, they usually also accept undef instead of a tuple reference, in which case they silently fail to match.

$bool = ber_is $tuple, $class, $tag, $flags, $data

This takes a BER $tuple and matches its elements against the provided values, all of which are optional - values that are either missing or undef will be ignored, the others will be matched exactly (e.g. as if you used == or eq (for $data)).

Some examples:

   ber_is $tuple, ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_SEQUENCE, 1
      orf die "tuple is not an ASN SEQUENCE";

   ber_is $tuple, ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_NULL
      or die "tuple is not an ASN NULL value";

   ber_is $tuple, ASN_UNIVERSAL, ASN_INTEGER, 0, 50
      or die "BER integer must be 50";

$seq = ber_is_seq $tuple

Returns the sequence members (the array of subvalues) if the $tuple is an ASN SEQUENCE, i.e. the BER_DATA member. If the $tuple is not a sequence it returns undef. For example, SNMP version 1/2c/3 packets all consist of an outer SEQUENCE value:

   my $ber = ber_decode $snmp_data;

   my $snmp = ber_is_seq $ber
      or die "SNMP packet invalid: does not start with SEQUENCE";

   # now we know $snmp is a sequence, so decode the SNMP version

   my $version = ber_is_int $snmp->[0]
      or die "SNMP packet invalid: does not start with version number";

$bool = ber_is_int $tuple, $int

Returns a true value if the $tuple represents an ASN INTEGER with the value $int.

$int = ber_is_int $tuple

Returns true (and extracts the integer value) if the $tuple is an ASN_INTEGER. For 0, this function returns a special value that is 0 but true.

$bool = ber_is_oid $tuple, $oid_string

Returns true if the $tuple represents an ASN_OBJECT_IDENTIFIER that exactly matches $oid_string. Example:

   ber_is_oid $tuple, "1.3.6.1.4"
      or die "oid must be 1.3.6.1.4";

$oid = ber_is_oid $tuple

Returns true (and extracts the OID string) if the $tuple is an ASN OBJECT IDENTIFIER. Otherwise, it returns undef.

CONSTRUCTION HELPERS

$tuple = ber_int $value

Constructs a new ASN_INTEGER tuple.

RELATIONSHIP TO Convert::BER and Convert::ASN1

This module is not the XS version of Convert::BER, but a different take at doing the same thing. I imagine this module would be a good base for speeding up either of these, or write a similar module, or write your own LDAP or SNMP module for example.

DEBUGGING

To aid debugging, you can call the ber_dump function to print a "nice" representation to STDOUT.

ber_dump $tuple[, $profile[, $prefix]]

In addition to specifying the BER $tuple to dump, you can also specify a $profile and a $prefix string that is printed in front of each line.

If $profile is $Convert::BER::XS::SNMP_PROFILE, then ber_dump will try to improve its output for SNMP data.

The output usually contains three columns, the "human readable" tag, the BER type used to decode it, and the data value.

This function is somewhat slow and uses a number of heuristics and tricks, so it really is only suitable for debug prints.

Example output:

   SEQUENCE
   | OCTET_STRING     bytes  800063784300454045045400000001
   | OCTET_STRING     bytes
   | CONTEXT (7)      CONSTRUCTED
   | | INTEGER          int    1058588941
   | | INTEGER          int    0
   | | INTEGER          int    0
   | | SEQUENCE
   | | | SEQUENCE
   | | | | OID              oid    1.3.6.1.2.1.1.3.0
   | | | | TIMETICKS        int    638085796

PROFILES

While any BER data can be correctly encoded and decoded out of the box, it can be inconvenient to have to manually decode some values into a "better" format: for instance, SNMP TimeTicks values are decoded into the raw octet strings of their BER representation, which is quite hard to decode. With profiles, you can change which class/tag combinations map to which decoder function inside ber_decode (and of course also which encoder functions are used in ber_encode).

This works by mapping specific class/tag combinations to an internal "ber type".

The default profile supports the standard ASN.1 types, but no application-specific ones. This means that class/tag combinations not in the base set of ASN.1 are decoded into their raw octet strings.

Convert::BER::XS defines two profile variables you can use out of the box:

$Convert::BER::XS::DEFAULT_PROFILE

This is the default profile, i.e. the profile that is used when no profile is specified for de-/encoding.

You can modify it, but remember that this modifies the defaults for all callers that rely on the default profile.

$Convert::BER::XS::SNMP_PROFILE

A profile with mappings for SNMP-specific application tags added. This is useful when de-/encoding SNMP data.

Example:

   $ber = ber_decode $data, $Convert::BER::XS::SNMP_PROFILE;

The Convert::BER::XS::Profile class

$profile = new Convert::BER::XS::Profile

Create a new profile. The profile will be identical to the default profile.

$profile->set ($class, $tag, $type)

Sets the mapping for the given $class/$tag combination to $type, which must be one of the BER_TYPE_* constants.

Note that currently, the mapping is stored in a flat array, so large values of $tag will consume large amounts of memory.

Example:

   $profile = new Convert::BER::XS::Profile;
   $profile->set (ASN_APPLICATION, SNMP_COUNTER32, BER_TYPE_INT);
   $ber = ber_decode $data, $profile;

$type = $profile->get ($class, $tag)

Returns the BER type mapped to the given $class/$tag combination.

BER Types

This lists the predefined BER types. BER types are formatters used internally to format and encode BER values. You can assign any BER_TYPE to any CLASS/TAG combination tgo change how that tag is decoded or encoded.

BER_TYPE_BYTES

The raw octets of the value. This is the default type for unknown tags and de-/encodes the value as if it were an octet string, i.e. by copying the raw bytes.

BER_TYPE_UTF8

Like BER_TYPE_BYTES, but decodes the value as if it were a UTF-8 string (without validation!) and encodes a perl unicode string into a UTF-8 BER string.

BER_TYPE_UCS2

Similar to BER_TYPE_UTF8, but treats the BER value as UCS-2 encoded string.

BER_TYPE_UCS4

Similar to BER_TYPE_UTF8, but treats the BER value as UCS-4 encoded string.

BER_TYPE_INT

Encodes and decodes a BER integer value to a perl integer scalar. This should correctly handle 64 bit signed and unsigned values.

BER_TYPE_OID

Encodes and decodes an OBJECT IDENTIFIER into dotted form without leading dot, e.g. 1.3.6.1.213.

BER_TYPE_RELOID

Same as BER_TYPE_OID but uses relative object identifier encoding: ASN.1 has this hack of encoding the first two OID components into a single integer in a weird attempt to save an insignificant amount of space in an otherwise wasteful encoding, and relative OIDs are basically OIDs without this hack. The practical difference is that the second component of an OID can only have the values 1..40, while relative OIDs do not have this restriction.

BER_TYPE_NULL

Decodes an ASN_NULL value into undef, and always encodes a ASN_NULL type, regardless of the perl value.

BER_TYPE_BOOL

Decodes an ASN_BOOLEAN value into 0 or 1, and encodes a perl boolean value into an ASN_BOOLEAN.

BER_TYPE_REAL

Decodes/encodes a BER real value. NOT IMPLEMENTED.

BER_TYPE_IPADDRESS

Decodes/encodes a four byte string into an IPv4 dotted-quad address string in Perl. Given the obsolete nature of this type, this is a low-effort implementation that simply uses sprintf and sscanf-style conversion, so it won't handle all string forms supported by inet_aton for example.

BER_TYPE_CROAK

Always croaks when encountered during encoding or decoding - the default behaviour when encountering an unknown type is to treat it as BER_TYPE_BYTES. When you don't want that but instead prefer a hard error for some types, then BER_TYPE_CROAK is for you.

Example Profile

The following creates a profile suitable for SNMP - it's exactly identical to the $Convert::BER::XS::SNMP_PROFILE profile.

   our $SNMP_PROFILE = new Convert::BER::XS::Profile;

   $SNMP_PROFILE->set (ASN_APPLICATION, SNMP_IPADDRESS , BER_TYPE_IPADDRESS);
   $SNMP_PROFILE->set (ASN_APPLICATION, SNMP_COUNTER32 , BER_TYPE_INT);
   $SNMP_PROFILE->set (ASN_APPLICATION, SNMP_UNSIGNED32, BER_TYPE_INT);
   $SNMP_PROFILE->set (ASN_APPLICATION, SNMP_TIMETICKS , BER_TYPE_INT);
   $SNMP_PROFILE->set (ASN_APPLICATION, SNMP_OPAQUE    , BER_TYPE_BYTES);
   $SNMP_PROFILE->set (ASN_APPLICATION, SNMP_COUNTER64 , BER_TYPE_INT);

LIMITATIONS/NOTES

This module can only en-/decode 64 bit signed and unsigned integers/tags/lengths, and only when your perl supports those. So no UUID OIDs for now (unless you map the OBJECT IDENTIFIER tag to something other than BER_TYPE_OID).

This module does not generally care about ranges, i.e. it will happily de-/encode 64 bit integers into an SNMP_UNSIGNED32 value, or a negative number into an SNMP_COUNTER64.

OBJECT IDENTIFIEERs cannot have unlimited length, although the limit is much larger than e.g. the one imposed by SNMP or other protocols, and is about 4kB.

Constructed strings are decoded just fine, but there should be a way to join them for convenience.

REAL values will always be encoded in decimal form and ssometimes is forced into a perl "NV" type, potentially losing precision.

ITHREADS SUPPORT

This module is unlikely to work in any other than the loading thread when the (officially discouraged) ithreads are in use.

AUTHOR

 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
 http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/Convert-BER-XS

cpanm Convert::BER::XS

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Convert::BER::XS