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31 lines
1.3 KiB
Markdown
31 lines
1.3 KiB
Markdown
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# Asymmetric cryptography used in Monero
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!!! danger
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Article author is nowhere close to being a cryptographer. Be sceptical on accuracy.
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Before we get to Monero, a little bit of context. We are talking asymmetric cryptography here.
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The "asymmetric" simply means the are two keys:
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* the private key (used primarily for signing data and for decrypting data)
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* the public key (used primarily for signature verification and encrypting data)
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This is in contrast to symmetric cryptography which uses a single (secret) key.
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Historically, asymmetric cryptography was based on the problem of factorization of a very large integers
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back into prime numbers (which is practically impossible for large enough integers).
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Recently, asymmetric cryptography is based on a mathematical notion of elliptic curves.
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Ed25519 is a specific, well researched and standardized elliptic curve used in Monero.
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## Private key
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Private key is a **large integer**, like:
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`115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639930`
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Private key is a **scalar**, meaning it is a single value.
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In equations scalars are represented by **lowercase letters**.
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In user-facing contexts, private keys are encoded in little-endian hexadecimal form, like:
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`35187c5096d10db8a57be93885f28694ac9dcaa09d6b1fb1903aec07e168430a`
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