How do I trust paper wallet generators to do correct BIP38 encryption?

lukaexpl

full member

Activity: 148

Merit: 106

Asking the question has led me to an answer.

One has to click on "display compressed key formats" at bitcoinpaperwallet.com and then it spits out the same results.

Still very confusing and there isn't a good text available to read about all the key formats out there.

achow101

staff

Activity: 3458

Merit: 6793

Just writing some code

bitaddress.org encrypted the private key without the compression flag byte while bitcoinpaperwallet.com encrypted the private key with the compression flag (or maybe vice versa, it's hard to tell). This means that technically the private keys correspond to different addresses, but bitaddress.org will show you both the compressed and uncompressed versions. If you use either of those encrypted private keys on either website, they both still work and will be properly decrypted.

lukaexpl

full member

Activity: 148

Merit: 106

I compared results of the two sites

bitaddress.org
bitcoinpaperwallet.com

I generated a private key using bitaddress.org

The key is:

KyuXav8xGTtUwgZP4V4FAHxdp7ktkzEEudUWXj19v4kpvbGcdHvA

I then used both sites to encrypt the private key with bip38 passphrase: "numberone"

bitaddress.org is ready to print the following encrypted key:
6PYKHgxkMHgogDj168W3LULC56QmrhBtMk3HojmBVcbP3cZr4SttZbb7qw

and bitcoinpaperwallet.com is ready to print the following encrypted key:
6PRHytQcwdJBZhcYSsRBCv5USV21NA1LQjKMTqE3TSofmTxsF8UpYKBjLT

Both sites give the same public key:
15Nmh1S7nB3paLbTTLqu5gXyt2dj7cdCeH

NOW PLEASE POINT TO ME TO AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM THAT I AM MISSING OR IS THERE A HUGE PROBLEM?

How can I ever be confident that encrypted keys can be reversed back when I get such disparaging results?

Topic: How do I trust paper wallet generators to do correct BIP38 encryption? (Read 453 times)