Python c extensions for signing Bitcoin messages.
Massive amount of credit to https://github.com/scintill/bitcoin-signature-tools for the inital verifysignature tool.
This currently depends on OpenSSL and Python. On Ubuntu or similar systems, the following should be sufficient to install dependencies and build:
sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev python-dev
python setup.py build
python setup.py install
Please see tests/test.py for examples of how to use the sign and verify module in python.
import bitcoinsign
# Don't import this private key into your wallet, thinking he-he someone might have
# left some coins in there that I can steal.
# Many popular services such as blockchain.info will set the latest
# added address in your wallet as the change address for the next transaction.
# So the next time you send some funds the change will end up in this address
# and someone else will almost certainly be watching it and take the coins before you do.
priv_key = "5KBXt56X5DTzczziU7pqKB6g7iE7HcUCePeTEgF3N2mhhf7ENug"
address = "1JTBWx4TQuPntUa4LDShg6xsbfEVFWbG9x"
message = "Hello World!"
signature = bitcoinsign.sign_message(priv_key, "Hello World!")
verified = bitcoinsig.verify_message(address, signature, message)
assert(verified is True)
These tools may not protect in-memory data as well as bitcoin-qt does (from leaking after free, or being paged-out.) Secrets key are being handled so you should be only use this for signing messages on systems you believe to be secure.
Remember that arguments passed on a process' command line are visible to local users in most UNIX systems, so make sure you trust all local users enough, or adjust the programs to take arguments another way.
It's faster than any implementation done in pure python. Implementations in pure python have taken 600ms+ in my tests.
%timeit -n 10 -r 10 sig = bitcoinsign.sign_message(priv_key, "Hello World!")
10 loops, best of 10: 2.71 ms per loop
%timeit -n 10 -r 10 bitcoinsign.verify_message(address, sig, "Hello World!")
10 loops, best of 10: 669 us per loop