Key generation options

The ipv8/keyvault/crypto.py file contains the main public key cryptography class for IPv8: ECCrypto. It allows you to generate the following keys:

Available curves for key generation

name	curve	backend
very-low	SECT163K1	M2Crypto
low	SECT233K1	M2Crypto
medium	SECT409K1	M2Crypto
high	SECT571R1	M2Crypto
curve25519	EC25519	Libsodium

The M2Crypto backend keys do not actually use the M2Crypto backend, but use a python-cryptography backend. These M2Crypto curves are supported for backwards compatibility with the Dispersy project. For new applications, only the curve25519 should be used.

Generally you will create either a new ECCrypto instance (if you wish to modify or extend the base cryptography) or use the default default_eccrypto instance. The following methods are most commonly used:

• generate_key(): generate a new key from a given curve name.

• key_to_bin(): serialize a given key into a string.

• key_from_private_bin(): load a private key from a string.

• key_from_public_bin(): load a public key from a string.

The following methods will usually be handled by IPv8 internally:

• key_to_hash(): convert a key into a sha1 string (usually accessed through Peer.mid).

• create_signature(): create a signature for some data (usually handled by the Community class).

• is_valid_signature(): checks a signature for validity (usually handled by the Community class).