Differences between “BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY” and “BEGIN PRIVATE KEY”

See https://polarssl.org/kb/cryptography/asn1-key-structures-in-der-and-pem (search the page for “BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY”) (archive link for posterity, just in case).

BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY is PKCS#1 and is just an RSA key. It is essentially just the key object from PKCS#8, but without the version or algorithm identifier in front. BEGIN PRIVATE KEY is PKCS#8 and indicates that the key type is included in the key data itself. From the link:

The unencrypted PKCS#8 encoded data starts and ends with the tags:

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
BASE64 ENCODED DATA
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----

Within the base64 encoded data the following DER structure is present:

PrivateKeyInfo ::= SEQUENCE {
  version         Version,
  algorithm       AlgorithmIdentifier,
  PrivateKey      BIT STRING
}

AlgorithmIdentifier ::= SEQUENCE {
  algorithm       OBJECT IDENTIFIER,
  parameters      ANY DEFINED BY algorithm OPTIONAL
}

So for an RSA private key, the OID is 1.2.840.113549.1.1.1 and there is a RSAPrivateKey as the PrivateKey key data bitstring.

As opposed to BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY, which always specifies an RSA key and therefore doesn’t include a key type OID. BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY is PKCS#1:

RSA Private Key file (PKCS#1)

The RSA private key PEM file is specific for RSA keys.

It starts and ends with the tags:

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
BASE64 ENCODED DATA
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

Within the base64 encoded data the following DER structure is present:

RSAPrivateKey ::= SEQUENCE {
  version           Version,
  modulus           INTEGER,  -- n
  publicExponent    INTEGER,  -- e
  privateExponent   INTEGER,  -- d
  prime1            INTEGER,  -- p
  prime2            INTEGER,  -- q
  exponent1         INTEGER,  -- d mod (p-1)
  exponent2         INTEGER,  -- d mod (q-1)
  coefficient       INTEGER,  -- (inverse of q) mod p
  otherPrimeInfos   OtherPrimeInfos OPTIONAL
}