RPC command to sign text with wallet private key #8

1. 
   gavinandresen commented at 1:59 pm on December 20, 2010: contributor

   I’m imagining an RPC call something like:

   signtext <bitcoinaddress> “MESSAGE…” … returns signature, in some standards-compliant format, assuming bitcoinaddress corresponds to a public key in our wallet.

   There should also be: verify <bitcoinaddress> “MESSAGE” “SIGNATURE” … which return true or false or “I have no idea what the public key for <bitcoinaddress> is”.

2. 
   jhyslop commented at 6:43 am on March 6, 2011: none

   I disagree with this. Bitcoin keys should be used for one purpose only - creating bitcoins. Any other use will erode the anonymity that the system can afford.

   Sounds like what you really want is GPG.

3. 
   gavinandresen commented at 9:20 pm on March 6, 2011: contributor

   I don’t see how this erodes anonymity if you don’t use it.

   And being able to prove that you own a given bitcoin address can be used for all sorts of interesting things for cases where you specifically do NOT want to be anonymous.

4. 
   jhyslop commented at 2:07 am on March 7, 2011: none

   OK, I’ll go along with that.
5. 
   jhyslop commented at 11:59 pm on March 7, 2011: none

   I’ve been thinking about this some more. Rather than sign an arbitrary message (which is generally frowned on by those smarter than me at cryptography; as I recall, a carefully-crafted message can make it easier to perform certain types of known-plaintext attacks)… um, where was I? Oh, yeah, what about adding specific RPC commands to issue a specific message? For example, if you want to prove you own(ed) a particular coin, you could issue a command something like “getproofofownership ”. Of course, under the hood that would be implemented using a routine that signs a message string, but the contents of the message string would be under the program’s control.

   That would also force us to think through the specific use-cases for which this feature is needed.

6. 
   JonnyLatte commented at 8:04 am on September 7, 2011: none

   What if you created a temporary key, signed the message with that and then signed the signature or the address of the temp key with your main key. Would this be more secure?
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Contributors
gavinandresen jhyslop JonnyLatte

Labels
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