I have been implementing the BIP0032 HD Wallet protocol, and ran into an issue in the documentation at
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0032 which slowed me down for an entire day. Here is the documentation on private child key derivation.
Private child key derivationTo define CKD((kpar, cpar), i) → (ki, ci):
Check whether the highest bit (0x80000000) of i is set:
If 1, private derivation is used: let I = HMAC-SHA512(Key = cpar, Data = 0x00 || kpar || i) [Note: The 0x00 pads the private key to make it 33 bytes long.]
If 0, public derivation is used: let I = HMAC-SHA512(Key = cpar, Data = χ(kpar*G) || i)
Split I = IL || IR into two 32-byte sequences, IL and IR.
ki = IL + kpar (mod n).
ci = IR.
It says you should add IL to kpar(mod n).
In pseudo code, this would be:
Adding these two values together should always create a new number that is 32 bytes long. However, for some values of IL and kpar(mod n), adding them together can create a number that is greater than 32 bytes long, and is therefore no longer a valid 256bit private key.
It appears the parenthesis are in the wrong place in the documentation. It should read:
ki = (IL + kpar) mod n.
or in pseudo code:
Changing the parenthesis finally made all of my test vectors pass. I'm posting this to hopefully save someone else a world of trouble. Can we change the documentation?
However, it's confusing given its placement right next to the equation. At any rate, it wouldn't hurt to make the documentation more clear in case any other developers are as unfamiliar with crypto concepts and byte management as I was. At least I learned a lot about bits/bytes/elliptic curves and everything else I tried in search of the answer.