How to generate signature & validate signature offline w/o using web3

Question

I just need a simple way to sign a message offline, preferably using Python or JavaScript. I don't want to have to sign in using Web3. I just want my private key to be used from a variable in the code.

This is only for a proof of concept tool that I'm making, which is why I don't want to use Web3 or any nodes to do this. Is there such a library that will let me sign & verify a message the same way an Ethereum nodes would?

Answer 1

This question is a possible duplicate. However, I think this code may be helpful for your POC i.e. signing and verifying messages without the use of Web3js.

Using Java, the ECKey.java class in EthereumJ gives you all the required functionality. Here's an example of it in practice...

Signing:

public void testEthereumSign() throws IOException {
    ECKey key = ECKey.fromPrivate(privateKey);
    System.out.println("Secret\t: " + Hex.toHexString(key.getPrivKeyBytes()));
    System.out.println("Pubkey\t: " + Hex.toHexString(key.getPubKey()));
    System.out.println("Data\t: " + exampleMessage);
    byte[] messageHash = HashUtil.sha3(exampleMessage.getBytes());
    ECDSASignature signature = key.sign(messageHash);
    String output = signature.toBase64();
    System.out.println("Signtr\t: " + output + " (Base64, length: " + output.length() + ")");
    assertEquals(sigBase64, output);
}

Verifying:

public void testVerifySignature1() {
    ECKey key = ECKey.fromPublicOnly(pubKey);
    BigInteger r = new BigInteger("28157690258821599598544026901946453245423343069728565040002908283498585537001");
    BigInteger s = new BigInteger("30212485197630673222315826773656074299979444367665131281281249560925428307087");
    ECDSASignature sig = ECDSASignature.fromComponents(r.toByteArray(), s.toByteArray(), (byte) 28);
    key.verify(HashUtil.sha3(exampleMessage.getBytes()), sig);
}

Python with pyethereum:

sign(key, network_id=None) - signs the transaction with the given key

sha3(data) - computes the SHA3 (or more precisely, keccak256) hash

ecrecover_to_pub(hash, v, r, s) - recovers the public key that made the signature as a 64-byte binary blob of encode_int32(x) + encode_int32(y). Hashing this and taking the last 20 bytes gives the address that signed a message.

ecsign(hash, key) - returns the v, r, s values of a signature

normalize_key(key) - converts a key from many formats into 32-byte binary

privtoaddr(key) - converts a key to an address