Binary values of cryptographic keys

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I'm using Python 3.7 and the NaCl cryptography library. I'm trying to print the binary values of the public and private keys. So far I can only print the hex values with this code:

import nacl.utils
from nacl.public import PrivateKey, Box

skbob = PrivateKey.generate()
print( bytes(skbob).hex() )

Can someone tell me how to print the keys binary value?

cryptography python-3.x
1 Answers

So you can print the actual 1's and 0's of the secret key using this code:

import nacl.utils
from nacl.public import PrivateKey, Box

def access_bit(data, num):
    base = int(num // 8)
    shift = int(num % 8)
    return (data[base] & (1<<shift)) >> shift

skbob = PrivateKey.generate()

print( bytes(skbob).hex())

print([access_bit(bytes(skbob),i) for i in range(len(bytes(skbob))*8)])

You will see an output like this:

b32965d39933fc447a5c3bcdb00b73ef5de0b9cd88aba35a1743e38d88c8bec1
[1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1]

And as you will see, this is 256-bits of entropy, just as expected.

FWIW, I did the same when I was learning about cryptography, there is something really nice in seeing the raw data, and getting your hands dirty with the low level stuff.

Best, Woodstock

user_17840110
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