README.md

Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) for Elixir

An elixir library for elliptic curve cryptography (MIT License). You can use it to sign messages and to verify signatures with a public key.

Generate public key pair

Use an existing elliptic curve public key pair or generate one using openssl (adapt the curve name according to your needs):

openssl ecparam -out ec_private_key.pem -name secp521r1 -genkey
openssl ec -in ec_private_key.pem -pubout -out ec_public_key.pem

Install

Simply add {:ecc, "~>0.1.0"} to the dependencies in your projects mix.exs file and run mix deps.get ecc

Use as GenServer-Module

ECC is a GenServer-Module. You can start a new process passing in both the private and the public key combined in one (still pem-style) string:

pem_public = File.read!("ec_public_key.pem")
pem_private = File.read!("ec_private_key.pem")
pem = Enum.join([pem_public, pem_private])

{:ok, _} = ECC.start_link(pem, :ecc)
{:ok, signature} = GenServer.call(:ecc, {:sign, "Hello", :sha512})

public_key = GenServer.call(:ecc, :get_public_key)
{:ok, result} = GenServer.call(:ecc, {:verify_signature, "Hello", signature, public_key, :sha512})
IO.puts("Hello == Hello? #{result}") # true

{:ok, result} = GenServer.call(:ecc, {:verify_signature, "World", signature, public_key, :sha512})
IO.puts("Hello == World? #{result}") # false

Use as a library

You can also use ECC.Crypto as a library. The pem-string passed to ECC.Crypto.parse_public_key/1 needs to additionally include an EC PARAMETERS section. In the example, we therefore join both pems to one string:

pem_public = File.read!("ec_public_key.pem")
pem_private = File.read!("ec_private_key.pem")
pem = Enum.join([pem_public, pem_private])

{:ok, public_key} = ECC.Crypto.parse_public_key(pem)
{:ok, private_key} = ECC.Crypto.parse_private_key(pem)

{:ok, signature} = ECC.Crypto.sign("Hello", :sha512, private_key)
{:ok, result} = ECC.Crypto.verify_signature("Hello", signature, :sha512, public_key)
IO.puts("Hello == Hello? #{result}") # true

{:ok, result} = ECC.Crypto.verify_signature("World", signature, :sha512, public_key)
IO.puts("Hello == World? #{result}") # false