Public and Private Key Pairs

Key Generation Overview

There are many different encryption algorithms but the best-practices recommendation is RSA. RSA is an asymmetric encryption algorithm. With a given key pair, data that is encrypted with one key can only be decrypted by the other. There are several different lengths that can be used, including 1024-bit, 2048-bit, and 4096-bit keys. In addition, the use of PKCS #1 will be seen when generating the keys. This standard defines the mathematical definitions and properties that RSA public and private keys must have. Below is an example of an RSA 1024-bit public key.

Below is the corresponding private key.

❗️
Do Not Share Private Key with anyone
The private key should be treated like a social security number or credit card number. If others get access to the private key they will be able to do anything with it that you were able to do, including registering the hashes of documents.

The private key needs to be stored securely, either on an enterprise key storage or in a secure folder storage system, such as a removable thumb drive.

Key Generation

In order to use the Integra blockchain, a public key must be registered with the Identity that was generated in the first section of this guide. In almost any programming language, the crypto library/package will be needed in order to generate these keys. Below is an example of generating these keys in Node.

const { privateKey, publicKey } = crypto.generateKeyPairSync('rsa', {
        modulusLength: 4096,
      });
const pubkeyString = publicKey.export({ type: 'pkcs1', format: 'pem' });
const privkeyString = privateKey.export({ type: 'pkcs1', format: 'pem' });

The next section, Registering Identity and Key on Blockchain, in this guide will show how to correctly register the identity and key on the Integra blockchain so it will be registered correctly according to specifications.

Key Generation Overview

❗️Do Not Share Private Key with anyone

Key Generation

❗️
Do Not Share Private Key with anyone