How do I get an ECDSA public key from just a Bitcoin signature? … SEC1 4.1.6 key recovery for curves over (mod p)-fields

Question

Update: Partial solution available on Git

EDIT: A compiled version of this is available at https://github.com/makerofthings

Answer 1

I'm afraid there are some problems with your sample data. First of all your sample Q is 61 bytes long, but Bitcoin public keys (using secp256k1 curve) should be 65 bytes in their uncompressed form. The Q you supplied does not verify the message correctly, but the Q I have calculated does seem to verify it.

I wrote code that calculates the correct public key for string "StackOverflow test 123" and verifies it using ECDsaSigner. However, the hash for this public key is 1HRDe7G7tn925iNxQaeD7R2ZkZiKowN8NW instead of 1Kb76YK9a4mhrif766m321AMocNvzeQxqV.

Can you please verify that your data is correct and maybe give the exact hash of the message string so that we could try to debug, an incorrect hash can mess things up quite bad. The code I have used is following:

using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Security.Cryptography;

using Org.BouncyCastle.Math;
using Org.BouncyCastle.Math.EC;
using Org.BouncyCastle.Asn1.X9;
using Org.BouncyCastle.Crypto.Signers;
using Org.BouncyCastle.Crypto.Parameters;
using Org.BouncyCastle.Utilities.Encoders;

public class Bitcoin
{
  public static ECPoint Recover(byte[] hash, byte[] sigBytes, int rec)
  {
    BigInteger r = new BigInteger(1, sigBytes, 0, 32);
    BigInteger s = new BigInteger(1, sigBytes, 32, 32);
    BigInteger[] sig = new BigInteger[]{ r, s };
    ECPoint Q = ECDSA_SIG_recover_key_GFp(sig, hash, rec, true);
    return Q;
  }

  public static ECPoint ECDSA_SIG_recover_key_GFp(BigInteger[] sig, byte[] hash, int recid, bool check)
  {
    X9ECParameters ecParams = Org.BouncyCastle.Asn1.Sec.SecNamedCurves.GetByName("secp256k1");
    int i = recid / 2;

    Console.WriteLine("r: "+ToHex(sig[0].ToByteArrayUnsigned()));
    Console.WriteLine("s: "+ToHex(sig[1].ToByteArrayUnsigned()));

    BigInteger order = ecParams.N;
    BigInteger field = (ecParams.Curve as FpCurve).Q;
    BigInteger x = order.Multiply(new BigInteger(i.ToString())).Add(sig[0]);
    if (x.CompareTo(field) >= 0) throw new Exception("X too large");

    Console.WriteLine("Order: "+ToHex(order.ToByteArrayUnsigned()));
    Console.WriteLine("Field: "+ToHex(field.ToByteArrayUnsigned()));

    byte[] compressedPoint = new Byte[x.ToByteArrayUnsigned().Length+1];
    compressedPoint[0] = (byte) (0x02+(recid%2));
    Buffer.BlockCopy(x.ToByteArrayUnsigned(), 0, compressedPoint, 1, compressedPoint.Length-1);
    ECPoint R = ecParams.Curve.DecodePoint(compressedPoint);

    Console.WriteLine("R: "+ToHex(R.GetEncoded()));

    if (check)
    {
      ECPoint O = R.Multiply(order);
      if (!O.IsInfinity) throw new Exception("Check failed");
    }

    int n = (ecParams.Curve as FpCurve).Q.ToByteArrayUnsigned().Length*8;
    BigInteger e = new BigInteger(1, hash);
    if (8*hash.Length > n)
    {
      e = e.ShiftRight(8-(n & 7));
    }
    e = BigInteger.Zero.Subtract(e).Mod(order);
    BigInteger rr = sig[0].ModInverse(order);
    BigInteger sor = sig[1].Multiply(rr).Mod(order);
    BigInteger eor = e.Multiply(rr).Mod(order);
    ECPoint Q = ecParams.G.Multiply(eor).Add(R.Multiply(sor));

    Console.WriteLine("n: "+n);
    Console.WriteLine("e: "+ToHex(e.ToByteArrayUnsigned()));
    Console.WriteLine("rr: "+ToHex(rr.ToByteArrayUnsigned()));
    Console.WriteLine("sor: "+ToHex(sor.ToByteArrayUnsigned()));
    Console.WriteLine("eor: "+ToHex(eor.ToByteArrayUnsigned()));
    Console.WriteLine("Q: "+ToHex(Q.GetEncoded()));

    return Q;
  }

  public static bool VerifySignature(byte[] pubkey, byte[] hash, byte[] sigBytes)
  {
    X9ECParameters ecParams = Org.BouncyCastle.Asn1.Sec.SecNamedCurves.GetByName("secp256k1");
    ECDomainParameters domainParameters = new ECDomainParameters(ecParams.Curve,
                                                                 ecParams.G, ecParams.N, ecParams.H,
                                                                 ecParams.GetSeed());

    BigInteger r = new BigInteger(1, sigBytes, 0, 32);
    BigInteger s = new BigInteger(1, sigBytes, 32, 32);
    ECPublicKeyParameters publicKey = new ECPublicKeyParameters(ecParams.Curve.DecodePoint(pubkey), domainParameters);

    ECDsaSigner signer = new ECDsaSigner();
    signer.Init(false, publicKey);
    return signer.VerifySignature(hash, r, s);
  }



  public static void Main()
  {
    string msg = "StackOverflow test 123";
    string sig = "IB7XjSi9TdBbB3dVUK4+Uzqf2Pqk71XkZ5PUsVUN+2gnb3TaZWJwWW2jt0OjhHc4B++yYYRy1Lg2kl+WaiF+Xsc=";
    string pubkey = "045894609CCECF9A92533F630DE713A958E96C97CCB8F5ABB5A688A238DEED6DC2D9D0C94EBFB7D526BA6A61764175B99CB6011E2047F9F067293F57F5";

    SHA256Managed sha256 = new SHA256Managed();
    byte[] hash = sha256.ComputeHash(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(msg), 0, Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(msg));
    Console.WriteLine("Hash: "+ToHex(hash));

    byte[] tmpBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(sig);
    byte[] sigBytes = new byte[tmpBytes.Length-1];
    Buffer.BlockCopy(tmpBytes, 1, sigBytes, 0, sigBytes.Length);

    int rec = (tmpBytes[0] - 27) & ~4;
    Console.WriteLine("Rec {0}", rec);

    ECPoint Q = Recover(hash, sigBytes, rec);
    string qstr = ToHex(Q.GetEncoded());
    Console.WriteLine("Q is same as supplied: "+qstr.Equals(pubkey));

    Console.WriteLine("Signature verified correctly: "+VerifySignature(Q.GetEncoded(), hash, sigBytes));
  }

  public static string ToHex(byte[] data)
  {
    return BitConverter.ToString(data).Replace("-","");
  }
}

EDIT I see this is still not commented on or accepted, so I wrote a full test that generates a private key and a public key, then generates a valid signature using the private key. After that it recovers the public key from the signature and hash and uses that public key to verify the signature of the message. Please see below, if there are still some questions please let me know.

  public static void FullSignatureTest(byte[] hash)
  {
    X9ECParameters ecParams = Org.BouncyCastle.Asn1.Sec.SecNamedCurves.GetByName("secp256k1");
    ECDomainParameters domainParameters = new ECDomainParameters(ecParams.Curve,
                                                                 ecParams.G, ecParams.N, ecParams.H,
                                                                 ecParams.GetSeed());
    ECKeyGenerationParameters keyGenParams =
      new ECKeyGenerationParameters(domainParameters, new SecureRandom());

    AsymmetricCipherKeyPair keyPair;
    ECKeyPairGenerator generator = new ECKeyPairGenerator();
    generator.Init(keyGenParams);
    keyPair = generator.GenerateKeyPair();

    ECPrivateKeyParameters privateKey = (ECPrivateKeyParameters) keyPair.Private;
    ECPublicKeyParameters publicKey = (ECPublicKeyParameters) keyPair.Public;

    Console.WriteLine("Generated private key: " + ToHex(privateKey.D.ToByteArrayUnsigned()));
    Console.WriteLine("Generated public key: " + ToHex(publicKey.Q.GetEncoded()));

    ECDsaSigner signer = new ECDsaSigner();
    signer.Init(true, privateKey);
    BigInteger[] sig = signer.GenerateSignature(hash);

    int recid = -1;
    for (int rec=0; rec<4; rec++) {
      try
      {
        ECPoint Q = ECDSA_SIG_recover_key_GFp(sig, hash, rec, true);
        if (ToHex(publicKey.Q.GetEncoded()).Equals(ToHex(Q.GetEncoded())))
        {
          recid = rec;
          break;
        }
      }
      catch (Exception)
      {
        continue;
      }
    }
    if (recid < 0) throw new Exception("Did not find proper recid");

    byte[] fullSigBytes = new byte[65];
    fullSigBytes[0] = (byte) (27+recid);
    Buffer.BlockCopy(sig[0].ToByteArrayUnsigned(), 0, fullSigBytes, 1, 32);
    Buffer.BlockCopy(sig[1].ToByteArrayUnsigned(), 0, fullSigBytes, 33, 32);

    Console.WriteLine("Generated full signature: " + Convert.ToBase64String(fullSigBytes));

    byte[] sigBytes = new byte[64];
    Buffer.BlockCopy(sig[0].ToByteArrayUnsigned(), 0, sigBytes, 0, 32);
    Buffer.BlockCopy(sig[1].ToByteArrayUnsigned(), 0, sigBytes, 32, 32);

    ECPoint genQ = ECDSA_SIG_recover_key_GFp(sig, hash, recid, false);
    Console.WriteLine("Generated signature verifies: " + VerifySignature(genQ.GetEncoded(), hash, sigBytes));
  }