How to read a PEM RSA private key from .NET

With respect to easily importing the RSA private key, without using 3rd party code such as BouncyCastle, I think the answer is "No, not with a PEM of the private key alone."

However, as alluded to above by Simone, you can simply combine the PEM of the private key (*.key) and the certificate file using that key (*.crt) into a *.pfx file which can then be easily imported.

To generate the PFX file from the command line:

openssl pkcs12 -in a.crt -inkey a.key -export -out a.pfx

Then use normally with the .NET certificate class such as:

using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates;

X509Certificate2 combinedCertificate = new X509Certificate2(@"C:\path\to\file.pfx");

Now you can follow the example from MSDN for encrypting and decrypting via RSACryptoServiceProvider:

I left out that for decrypting you would need to import using the PFX password and the Exportable flag. (see: BouncyCastle RSAPrivateKey to .NET RSAPrivateKey)

X509KeyStorageFlags flags = X509KeyStorageFlags.Exportable;
X509Certificate2 cert = new X509Certificate2("my.pfx", "somepass", flags);

RSACryptoServiceProvider rsa = (RSACryptoServiceProvider)cert.PrivateKey;
RSAParameters rsaParam = rsa.ExportParameters(true); 

You might take a look at JavaScience's source for OpenSSLKey

There's code in there that does exactly what you want to do.

In fact, they have a lot of crypto source code available here.

---

Source code snippet:

//------- Parses binary ans.1 RSA private key; returns RSACryptoServiceProvider  ---
public static RSACryptoServiceProvider DecodeRSAPrivateKey(byte[] privkey)
{
        byte[] MODULUS, E, D, P, Q, DP, DQ, IQ ;

        // ---------  Set up stream to decode the asn.1 encoded RSA private key  ------
        MemoryStream  mem = new MemoryStream(privkey) ;
        BinaryReader binr = new BinaryReader(mem) ;    //wrap Memory Stream with BinaryReader for easy reading
        byte bt = 0;
        ushort twobytes = 0;
        int elems = 0;
        try {
                twobytes = binr.ReadUInt16();
                if (twobytes == 0x8130) //data read as little endian order (actual data order for Sequence is 30 81)
                        binr.ReadByte();        //advance 1 byte
                else if (twobytes == 0x8230)
                        binr.ReadInt16();       //advance 2 bytes
                else
                        return null;

                twobytes = binr.ReadUInt16();
                if (twobytes != 0x0102) //version number
                        return null;
                bt = binr.ReadByte();
                if (bt !=0x00)
                        return null;


                //------  all private key components are Integer sequences ----
                elems = GetIntegerSize(binr);
                MODULUS = binr.ReadBytes(elems);

                elems = GetIntegerSize(binr);
                E = binr.ReadBytes(elems) ;

                elems = GetIntegerSize(binr);
                D = binr.ReadBytes(elems) ;

                elems = GetIntegerSize(binr);
                P = binr.ReadBytes(elems) ;

                elems = GetIntegerSize(binr);
                Q = binr.ReadBytes(elems) ;

                elems = GetIntegerSize(binr);
                DP = binr.ReadBytes(elems) ;

                elems = GetIntegerSize(binr);
                DQ = binr.ReadBytes(elems) ;

                elems = GetIntegerSize(binr);
                IQ = binr.ReadBytes(elems) ;

                Console.WriteLine("showing components ..");
                if (verbose) {
                        showBytes("\nModulus", MODULUS) ;
                        showBytes("\nExponent", E);
                        showBytes("\nD", D);
                        showBytes("\nP", P);
                        showBytes("\nQ", Q);
                        showBytes("\nDP", DP);
                        showBytes("\nDQ", DQ);
                        showBytes("\nIQ", IQ);
                }

                // ------- create RSACryptoServiceProvider instance and initialize with public key -----
                RSACryptoServiceProvider RSA = new RSACryptoServiceProvider();
                RSAParameters RSAparams = new RSAParameters();
                RSAparams.Modulus =MODULUS;
                RSAparams.Exponent = E;
                RSAparams.D = D;
                RSAparams.P = P;
                RSAparams.Q = Q;
                RSAparams.DP = DP;
                RSAparams.DQ = DQ;
                RSAparams.InverseQ = IQ;
                RSA.ImportParameters(RSAparams);
                return RSA;
        }
        catch (Exception) {
                return null;
        }
        finally {
                binr.Close();
        }
}

Update 03/03/2021

.NET 5 now supports this out of the box.

To try the code snippet below, generate a keypair and encrypt some text at http://travistidwell.com/jsencrypt/demo/

var privateKey = @"-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
{ the full PEM private key } 
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----";

var rsa = RSA.Create();
rsa.ImportFromPem(privateKey.ToCharArray());

var decryptedBytes = rsa.Decrypt(
    Convert.FromBase64String("{ base64-encoded encrypted string }"), 
    RSAEncryptionPadding.Pkcs1
);

// this will print the original unencrypted string
Console.WriteLine(Encoding.UTF8.GetString(decryptedBytes));

Original answer

I solved, thanks. In case anyone's interested, bouncycastle did the trick, just took me some time due to lack of knowledge from on my side and documentation. This is the code:

var bytesToDecrypt = Convert.FromBase64String("la0Cz.....D43g=="); // string to decrypt, base64 encoded
 
AsymmetricCipherKeyPair keyPair; 
 
using (var reader = File.OpenText(@"c:\myprivatekey.pem")) // file containing RSA PKCS1 private key
    keyPair = (AsymmetricCipherKeyPair) new PemReader(reader).ReadObject(); 
 
var decryptEngine = new Pkcs1Encoding(new RsaEngine());
decryptEngine.Init(false, keyPair.Private); 
 
var decrypted = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(decryptEngine.ProcessBlock(bytesToDecrypt, 0, bytesToDecrypt.Length));