Signature Verification

Cairo has support to verify ECDSA signatures via the ecdsa builtin and the verify_ecdsa_signature function.

Example

The following is a Python script that demonstrates how to generate an ECDSA signature for the message 42:

from starkware.crypto.signature.signature import (
    sign,
    pedersen_hash,
    private_to_stark_key,
)
 
 
def main():
    # Note: You should use a secure source of randomness when
    #   you generate a private key.
    priv_key = 12345678
    pub_key = private_to_stark_key(priv_key)
 
    msg = 42
    # Hashing the message so that we can sign it.
    msg_hash = pedersen_hash(msg)
 
    # Creating a signature of the message hash with our private key.
    r, s = sign(msg_hash, priv_key)
 
    print(
        f"""
msg:      {msg}
msg_hash: {msg_hash}
pub_key:  {pub_key}
r:        {r}
s:        {s}
"""
    )
 
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Running the script produces the following output:

msg:      42
msg_hash: 3024046557455497363580104900700010992073497311783761970049125873907615018679
pub_key:  700486945785093896215451679915330918764422796552594089817843617223540797798
r:        76350106573216761435080086889032248828552866921601503194377969478483208055
s:        1021442279391122344180195554869989785928240100220091002338062629385720297360

We can use the verify_ecdsa_signature function in combination with the ecdsa builtin to verify the signature in a Cairo program:

# Declare that we want to use the `ecdsa` builtin.
%builtins ecdsa

from starkware.cairo.common.cairo_builtins import SignatureBuiltin
from starkware.cairo.common.signature import verify_ecdsa_signature

# We need to pass in the `ecdsa_ptr` implicit argument.
func main{ecdsa_ptr : SignatureBuiltin*}():
    # These are the variables our Python script generated.
    let msg_hash = 3024046557455497363580104900700010992073497311783761970049125873907615018679
    let pub_key = 700486945785093896215451679915330918764422796552594089817843617223540797798
    let r = 76350106573216761435080086889032248828552866921601503194377969478483208055
    let s = 1021442279391122344180195554869989785928240100220091002338062629385720297360

    # Verifying the ECDSA signature.
    # This function throws an error if the signature is invalid.
    verify_ecdsa_signature(msg_hash, pub_key, r, s)

    return ()
end