ethereum/pyethapp

Question: `mk_random_privkey` Entropy

dychen opened this issue · 3 comments

dychen commented

Just scanning the code (nice work here!) and had a quick question:

In

pyethapp/pyethapp/accounts.py

Line 22 in 1f97f98

def mk_random_privkey():

I am no expert, but is there a reason to use this implementation instead of

os.urandom(32).encode('hex')

Both implementations use system-defined randomness, and I'm a bit worried about the loss of entropy of using zfill.

Also quick question: is there any reason you're storing the raw address returned by privtopub instead of the hex-encoded version? It looks like there's quite a bit of representation conversion back and forth, and I'm wondering if this could be avoided by just storing the hex.

dychen commented

@joeykrug thoughts?

joeykrug commented

I would use a non zfill version, no idea re raw address.

Would merge a PR w/ non zfill'd version [the loss of entropy isn't significant imo, but 10 years from now perhaps it will be so better to be safe]

dychen commented

Yeah, my main thought is it's easier and more maintainable to go with the simple version. Relatively trivial and maybe not worth a PR, but seems preferable in all respects to the existing implementation.