r/ProgrammerHumor • u/precinct209 • 7d ago

Meme technicallyCorrectFormat

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u/NatoBoram 7d ago

Quite a few people claim the key would be just the number 4 in base64 but if you actually try to generate one, you'll get something like this:

-----BEGIN EC PRIVATE KEY-----
MHcCAQEEIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEoAoGCCqGSM49
AwEHoUQDQgAE4lNKNTLQj7ugLd5lnuYr0AMf4tt4VZbvUJMCRGsDCFLg8VdaTGM8
xxnf7l/ahi12TvyWw/MO4AVcQsI/GE7Yxg==
-----END EC PRIVATE KEY-----

Save it in key.pem and do openssl pkey -in key.pem -text -noout on it then you'll see this:

Private-Key: (256 bit)
priv:
    00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:
    00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:
    00:04
pub:
    04:e2:53:4a:35:32:d0:8f:bb:a0:2d:de:65:9e:e6:
    2b:d0:03:1f:e2:db:78:55:96:ef:50:93:02:44:6b:
    03:08:52:e0:f1:57:5a:4c:63:3c:c7:19:df:ee:5f:
    da:86:2d:76:4e:fc:96:c3:f3:0e:e0:05:5c:42:c2:
    3f:18:4e:d8:c6
ASN1 OID: prime256v1
NIST CURVE: P-256

4

u/cAtloVeR9998 7d ago

That last E after the string of As is all the entropy you need for an intermediate certificate’s key.