Bitcoin and random number generation...

[David Clarke]

Anyone have any thoughts to share on how to programmatically generate Bitcoin a set of public / private keys?
Like the way https://www.bitaddress.org/ can produce them?

Also see https://komodoplatform.com/en/academ...allet-address/

As I understand it the private key is a random 256 bits. So I could flip a coin 256 times and come up with a unique set of bits? Really, it is that simple?

I am probably being naive but I would figure it would be quite doable to cook up 256 random bits.

Take 256 coins and toss them in the air? Would that be unique?

Would 64 wheels marked in Hex be random if each was spun separately?

I know there are lots of posts on here about random numbers....

David Roberts and Stuart have some good stuff.

From Stuart: http://qrng.ethz.ch/#welcome-to-quantum-rng-for-openqu

Was just wondering if anyone had thought about them in the context of Bitcoin.

Also looking for a way to extract the Bitcoin public key from the private key.

There is some discussion of that here:
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/qu...-a-private-key

[David Clarke]

https://www.crypto-lyon.fr/how-to-ge...n-bitcoin.html

How to get the public key ?


A public key is derived from a private key. To derive the public key you need an Elliptic Curve, Bitcoin chose to use secp256k1. Your public key is your private key multiplied by the generator point (which is a constant set in the secp256k1 standard), so it’s a point on the curve. The security in this operation is based on the fact that on an elliptic curve you can kind of “multiply” but you can not divide : you cannot retrieve the private key by dividing you public key by the generator point. You can find more information about this process here.

[David Clarke]

How to get the address ?


The address is an encoded part of a hash of your public key. Because it is the last part of the post, let’s take a concrete example to do this part :

Generate a random private key :

EDCC6224FEE390A57C76C13A9BECC9502A6F3B1BF6F72B6ED11B83A0F0E3E9FC
Derive the public key from it :

04F3DF70315E569BBF9FB427DA65E60CE2E3660EA83EC8A8523DA4DE6901F7988E9E460CD594F27C9F6007A277820F3C1D8BB8485E1FCA38F37BCF9DC1A2DFA2A0
Pass it through the sha256 function, then the ripemd160 function :

C0CBEC6E4B3F537A68F64F65B68998158E211B92
Add 00to the begining. It is called “network byte” and means we are on Bitcoin main network.

00C0CBEC6E4B3F537A68F64F65B68998158E211B92
Then take the four first bytes of the sha256 hash of the sha256 hash of this word and append it to the end.

# The hash from which you take the first four bytes B4AE3A0DCF1AAD584327FDB0974BBCBE3E19C2A6A2F9A29D7303C3A0D526910F
# The result 00C0CBEC6E4B3F537A68F64F65B68998158E211B92B4AE3A0D
Then base58check encode it :

1JaR2gwbg2vFvgHvshaL61HmCitaCGaBgQ

[David Clarke]

More questions about "random numbers"

if I had a form with 64 buttons - each button would stop a 1 to 16 hex counter when pressed. Would that be "crypto grade" random?

[Stuart McLachlan]

How would does the "counter" work?

64 x 1 to 16 HEX counters? That will give you 64 values in the decimal range 1 to 22.
Presumably you meant 0 to 15 decimal counters each of which can be regarded as an 8 bit byte which you would concatenate to give you a 512 bit value and you are relying on your users delay between clicks to generate entropy.

Please define "crypto grade" and explain why your value needs to be "crypto grade"
Please define "random"
Please defune "number"


Looks like you are trying to generate a 512 string of bits.

Your method sure sounds like a lot of effort when there are plenty of simpler ways to generate a "cryptographically secure" random number, if you even need it to be cryptographically secure - which is doubtful if you are just generating a bitcoin private key.

[David Clarke]

Hi Stuart
Yes, I meant 0 to F - hex - 64 of them.

Go to https://www.bitaddress.org/ I am trying to figure out if I can do something like that pragmatically. Not the mouse part, the make a bitcoin private key part.

If I was to just press 0 / 1 256 times is that random?

Bitcoin people say "Oh be careful! It's got to have lots of entropy! Perhaps I am being naive...

I would think there are all sorts of ways to introduce entropy! Or just call some DLL?

[Stuart McLachlan]

Just checked and the ETH Zurich site http://random.openqu.org does not appear to be operational any more.

But https://qrng.anu.edu.au works.

Here's code to return a string of quantum random bytes
'

'Returns a set of quantum random bytes from https://qrng.anu.edu.au
'as a byte string
'Note: displaying the with Print/Msgbox may be problematic
'since it may contain bytes in the range CHR$(0) to CHR$(31)

#COMPILE EXE
#DIM ALL
#INCLUDE ONCE "WIN32API.INC"  'Roca Includes

FUNCTION PBMAIN () AS LONG
    LOCAL qMin,qMax AS QUAD
    LOCAL qty, i AS LONG
    LOCAL s,s2 AS STRING
    LOCAL numbytes AS LONG
    numbytes = 64  '64 bytes = 512 bits
    s = GetRandBytes(numbytes)

    IF LEN(s) <> numbytes THEN
        ? "Problem retrieving Quantum Random bytes"
    ELSE
        FOR i = 1 TO numbytes
            s2 &= HEX$(ASC(s,i),2)
        NEXT
       ? "Random " & STR$(numbytes) & " byte string in Hex = " & $LF & s2
    END IF
END FUNCTION

FUNCTION GetRandBytes(qty AS LONG) AS STRING
    LOCAL v1        AS VARIANT
    LOCAL v2        AS VARIANT
    LOCAL v3        AS VARIANT
    LOCAL vResult   AS VARIANT
    LOCAL vResponse AS VARIANT
    LOCAL oHttp     AS DISPATCH
    LOCAL sResponse AS STRING
    LOCAL i         AS LONG
    LOCAL s AS STRING
    ON ERROR GOTO errtrap 'in case  HTTP  call fails!
    SET oHttp = NEWCOM "Msxml2.XMLHTTP"
    v1 = "GET"
    v2 = "https://qrng.anu.edu.au/API/jsonI.php?length=64&type=uint8&size=1
    v3 = 0
    OBJECT CALL oHttp.Open(v1, v2, v3) TO vResult
    OBJECT CALL oHttp.Send(v1) TO vResult
    OBJECT GET  oHttp.Responsetext TO vResponse
    oHttp = NOTHING
    sResponse = VARIANT$(vResponse)
    IF INSTR(sResponse,"""success"":true}") THEN
       s = MID$(sResponse,INSTR(sResponse,"[") + 1, INSTR(sResponse,"]") - INSTR(sResponse,"[")-1)
       DIM arrS(1 TO qty) AS STRING  'get numbers as strings
       PARSE s, arrS(), ","
       s=""
       FOR i = 1 TO qty
           s &= CHR$(VAL(arrS(i)))
       NEXT
       FUNCTION = s
       EXIT FUNCTION
    ELSE
        ? "Failed to get bytes" & $LF & sresponse
    END IF
errtrap:
END FUNCTION
'

(Also posted as an update in the previous Source Code thread)

[Dale Yarker]

In subject is "BitCoin". It uses SHA-256 which has 256 bit output. More than 256 coin tosses needed for input (the entropy). Just pressing 0 or 1 is not random. A PC by itself (like using TIMER, etc) does not have enough entropy.)

Homework to do before any programming:
FIPS about SHA-256 (though Windows has now)
FIPS about using hashes (like SHA-256) for PRNG
Bitcoin docs

(FIPS are Federal Information Processing Standards by NBST)

Sorry if that is too much rain for your parade.

[David Clarke]

Thanks Dale - Not too much rain at all!

I would think something like this would be random:

FUNCTION PBMAIN () AS LONG

LOCAL BIG_STRING AS STRING
LOCAL STR_SIZE AS LONG

DO
WHILE LEN(BIG_STRING) < 64
BIG_STRING = BIG_STRING + RIGHT$(GET_NUMBER,8)
WEND

PRINT BIG_STRING
BIG_STRING = ""

IF WAITKEY$ = "X" THEN EXIT DO
LOOP



END FUNCTION
'------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FUNCTION GET_NUMBER()AS STRING

LOCAL CycleCount_1 AS QUAD
LOCAL CycleCount_2 AS QUAD

TIX CycleCount_1
TIX CycleCount_2

LOCAL STRING_1 AS STRING
LOCAL STRING_2 AS STRING
LOCAL STRING_3 AS STRING
LOCAL STRING_4 AS STRING

LOCAL NUMBER_1 AS QUAD
LOCAL NUMBER_2 AS QUAD
LOCAL NUMBER_3 AS QUAD
LOCAL NUMBER_4 AS QUAD

TIX END CycleCount_1
STRING_1 = FORMAT$(RND(1, 9)) + FORMAT$(TIMER*1000) + LEFT$(FORMAT$(CycleCount_1),3) + RIGHT$(FORMAT$(CycleCount_1),3) + FORMAT$(RND(1, 9))
STRING_2 = FORMAT$(RND(1, 9)) + FORMAT$(CycleCount_1) + RIGHT$(FORMAT$(TIMER*1000) ,3) + LEFT$ (FORMAT$(CycleCount_1),3) + FORMAT$(RND(1, 9))

TIX END CycleCount_2
STRING_3 = FORMAT$(RND(1, 9)) + FORMAT$(TIMER*1000) + LEFT$(FORMAT$(CycleCount_2),4) + RIGHT$(FORMAT$(CycleCount_2),2) + FORMAT$(RND(1, 9))
STRING_4 = FORMAT$(RND(1, 9)) + FORMAT$(CycleCount_2) + RIGHT$(FORMAT$(TIMER*1000) ,4) + LEFT$ (FORMAT$(CycleCount_2),2) + FORMAT$(RND(1, 9))

NUMBER_1 = VAL(STRING_1)
NUMBER_2 = VAL(STRING_2)
NUMBER_3 = VAL(STRING_3)
NUMBER_4 = VAL(STRING_4)

FUNCTION = HEX$(NUMBER_1) + HEX$(RND(1, 9)) + HEX$(NUMBER_2) + HEX$(RND(1, 9)) + HEX$(NUMBER_3) + HEX$(RND(1, 9)) + HEX$(NUMBER_4)

END FUNCTION

[David Clarke]

Cool code Stuart! But the actual number is coming from https://qrng.anu.edu.au/API/jsonI.ph...e=uint8&size=1 right?

[David Clarke]

I know everybody would say "don't use RND(1,9)" or any other way of using RND.

But mixing it as a string with other "random" stuff like RIGHT$( FORMAT$(TIMER),2) AND TIX or current memory in use or some % of free memory etc.... Sure feels random!

[Dale Yarker]

I would think something like this would be random:

And post 11

Not even close. Good for games.

[Stuart McLachlan]

Cool code Stuart! But the actual number is coming from https://qrng.anu.edu.au/API/jsonI.ph...e=uint8&size=1 right?

Correct. That URL returns a JSON file containing an array of true random bytes (values 0-255). generated in real time by quantum fluctuations (Quantum Random Numbers).
Alternativel slightly different API URLs withh generate the data in different lengths and formats https://qrng.anu.edu.au/contact/api-documentation/

"This website offers true random numbers to anyone on the internet. The random numbers are generated in real-time in our lab by measuring the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum. The vacuum is described very differently in the quantum physics and classical physics. In classical physics, a vacuum is considered as a space that is empty of matter or photons. Quantum physics however says that that same space resembles a sea of virtual particles appearing and disappearing all the time. This is because the vacuum still possesses a zero-point energy. Consequently, the electromagnetic field of the vacuum exhibits random fluctuations in phase and amplitude at all frequencies. By carefully measuring these fluctuations, we are able to generate ultra-high bandwidth random numbers."

Using true randoms like that, you can forget about "crypto safe", they are inherently "un-crackable".

[Eric Pearson]

inherently "un-crackable".

...with current technology that we're allowed to know about.

[David Clarke]

I guess some of this discussion is philosophical - if you called 256 people randomly out of the phone book and asked them to select 1 or 0 or Up or Down etc.... That is not random?

On the other hand https://comscire.com/frequently-asked-questions/

I know how to use SHA-256 to create a hash. Still looking for an explanation of what to feed into it for random numbers. I use sha-256 to hash passwords now.

[David Clarke]

Stuart

Would you use the number as it was sent by the web site or would running that through sha-256 be a good idea, or a bad idea!

I remember reading that passing something through a hash twice actually can make it less secure.

Again - my goal is to generate Bitcoin private keys.

[David Clarke]

And then there is hardware like this - https://www.amazon.com/TrueRNG-V3-Ha...dp/B01KR2JHTA/

[David Clarke]

And then there is https://www.random.org/

[Michael Mattias]

Who needs Bitcoin anyway? I have a quart freezer bag full of nickels I take to the Senior Center to play sheepshead.

[George Bleck]

Stuart

Would you use the number as it was sent by the web site or would running that through sha-256 be a good idea, or a bad idea!

I remember reading that passing something through a hash twice actually can make it less secure.

Again - my goal is to generate Bitcoin private keys.

NOT true (caveat on the type of hash used). In fact, this is the basis for highly secure password systems (key stretched hashing algorithms like bycrypt, PBKDF2, etc.) designed to help prevent high speed brute-forcing using time or memory bound techniques.