Golang : Example for ECDSA(Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) package functions

In cryptography, the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) is a variant of the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) which uses elliptic curve cryptography. This tutorial is just a slight variant of the previous tutorial for DSA and we will learn how to use the ECDSA functions to do :

• generate a private key
• extract the public key from the generated private key
• use the private key to sign
• use the public key to verify the signature

ecdsaexample.go

 package main

 import (
  "crypto/ecdsa"
  "crypto/elliptic"
  "crypto/md5"
  "crypto/rand"
  "fmt"
  "hash"
  "io"
  "math/big"
  "os"
 )

 func main() {

  pubkeyCurve := elliptic.P256() //see http://golang.org/pkg/crypto/elliptic/#P256

  privatekey := new(ecdsa.PrivateKey)
  privatekey, err := ecdsa.GenerateKey(pubkeyCurve, rand.Reader) // this generates a public & private key pair

  if err != nil {
 fmt.Println(err)
 os.Exit(1)
  }

  var pubkey ecdsa.PublicKey
  pubkey = privatekey.PublicKey

  fmt.Println("Private Key :")
  fmt.Printf("%x \n", privatekey)

  fmt.Println("Public Key :")
  fmt.Printf("%x \n", pubkey)

  // Sign ecdsa style

  var h hash.Hash
  h = md5.New()
  r := big.NewInt(0)
  s := big.NewInt(0)

  io.WriteString(h, "This is a message to be signed and verified by ECDSA!")
  signhash := h.Sum(nil)

  r, s, serr := ecdsa.Sign(rand.Reader, privatekey, signhash)
  if serr != nil {
 fmt.Println(err)
 os.Exit(1)
  }

  signature := r.Bytes()
  signature = append(signature, s.Bytes()...)

  fmt.Printf("Signature : %x\n", signature)

  // Verify
  verifystatus := ecdsa.Verify(&pubkey, signhash, r, s)
  fmt.Println(verifystatus) // should be true
 }

Executing the code will produce the following output( private/public keys will be different for each execution) :

go run ecdsaexample.go

Private Key :

&{{{20821a420} 127e668421cbbf6a80692679560c618d5f06281b02a8323157816e4c7ce50e2b

3b776e2f6d9febc03d3abdf91c16d15396dc6f72bec3e259df2bfdec8fe41f89}

44d0f3819c4153a23f42263034d450c3038a305038285a04f4e068b56ebe5393}

Public Key :

{{20821a420} 127e668421cbbf6a80692679560c618d5f06281b02a8323157816e4c7ce50e2b

3b776e2f6d9febc03d3abdf91c16d15396dc6f72bec3e259df2bfdec8fe41f89}

Signature :

d7b0dd08b4de09da1c70567655ba16a5437a75bdaa4917ab509bf663e71d1aeef0d6cc

11e458e66e15a4ffae70ab434eb586514e22d95e89f75ec96c48bcb4f5

true