how to generate a valid private-key + recv address in PHP?

[kjj]

Someone asked in a PM, so I wrote an example.

Code:

<?php
$bits_desired=256;
$bytes_desired=ceil($bits_desired/8);
echo "Asking for ".$bits_desired." bits of random (".$bytes_desired." bytes)\n";
if(TRUE==($fp_ent=fopen("/proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail","r"))){
 $ent=trim(fgets($fp_ent));
 echo "Entropy available: ".$ent."\n";
 if($ent>$bits_desired){
  if(TRUE==($fp_rand=fopen("/dev/random","r"))){
   $r=fread($fp_rand,$bytes_desired);
   echo bin2hex($r)."\n";
  }else echo "Failed to open /dev/random.\n";
 }else echo "Not enough bits available.\n";
}else echo "Unable to get status of entropy pool.\n";
?>

[BCB]

I've been testing importing and extracting and paying key and all seems to be working fine.

[Richy_T]

This code generates a mini-key if anyone's interested. I was looking for the next step, priv->pub key when I ran across this thread. It needs tidying of course and I just remembered I'm using the non-crypto rand() so that will need to be fixed too. Maybe I should just delete it

Edit: OK, fixed to use /dev/urandom. Use /dev/random if you'd prefer.

Code:

<?php
  #Below is full list of available characters.
  #"123456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz"
  $fp=fopen("/dev/urandom","r") or die;
  $available_chars="23456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnpqrstuvwxyz";
  do{
    $minikey='S';
    for($i=0;$i<29;$i++){
      while(($c=ord(fgetc($fp)))>=strlen($available_chars));
      $minikey.=substr($available_chars,$c,1);
    }
    $check=hash('sha256',$minikey . '?') . "\n";
  }while(substr($check,0,2)!='00');
  fclose($fp);
  $priv=hash('sha256',$minikey);
  print "Minikey: $minikey\n";
  print "Privkey: $priv\n";
?>

Note that I deliberately exclude "1' and 'o' but you may add them back in if needed.

[Richy_T]

For the challenge and to learn more about Bitcoin, I implemented this in pure PHP (bcmath extension required, but I think that's pretty standard. Edit: Goes much faster with GMP extension!)  Please check it over yourself before using it!  I checked several keypairs with Casascius' address utility and they look good, but I'm not an expert, and there aren't real solid tests of the code.  Most of the work is by a pre-written ECC lib I found.

Anyway, the code, with a demo embedded, is at https://gist.github.com/3549107.  It is a little slow right now but could be sped up by using GMP instead of bcmath.  I don't know if anyone still cares or if the bounty has been claimed, but it'd be nice to have.

If there's interest, let me know, and I will extend and/or test it better.

Edit: Cleaned up the code and made it use GMP if possible, as it is much much faster.  Also found ways to use the ECC lib's helper functions more, so there is less code.

This disappeared (link no good). Anyone have a copy anywhere?

[scintill]

This disappeared (link no good). Anyone have a copy anywhere?

I removed it, for being embarrassed about its weak key generation (!), and not wanting to enable people to unwittingly generate weak keys.  Also, someone has made a more flexible fork called PHPCoinAddress, but I would recommend at least applying my patch here, in addition to ideally studying secure key generation for your configuration/platform (at least if you are doing something high-risk/high-value in production.)  Feedback on my pull requests to PHPCoinAddress is welcome.  Thanks.