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Mobile, accounts/keystore: export private key#16024

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turbolent wants to merge 2 commits into
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axiomzen:bastian/mobile-export-private-key
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Mobile, accounts/keystore: export private key#16024
turbolent wants to merge 2 commits into
ethereum:masterfrom
axiomzen:bastian/mobile-export-private-key

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@turbolent
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Enable the export of the private key and expose the function from the mobile library.
Also, fix the documentation of the import key function.

@turbolent turbolent requested a review from karalabe as a code owner February 5, 2018 20:46
@turbolent
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One test failed due to a timeout: https://travis-ci.org/ethereum/go-ethereum/jobs/337733447#L2229

Can somebody try to retrigger the build?

@karalabe
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karalabe commented Feb 5, 2018

This it not really a functionality we would like to support. Exporting the raw private key is an extremely dangerous thing to do. Why do you think it has value over simply exporting the encrypted version of the private key?

@turbolent
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I do understand that exporting a raw private key is dangerous. However, existing wallets like MetaMask already allow both the import and export of raw private keys.

@holiman
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holiman commented Feb 8, 2018

I had a hard time understanding the use-case for exporting private keys in the first place (see discussion on #15438 (comment)) . I fail to see why we need it for mobile. IMO: it's a feature, not a bug, that it's difficult for people to export raw keys. Making it easier to export raw keys will lead to people doing that instead of dealing with encrypted keystores, which will lead to more thefts of ether.

I may be overlooking some important usecase here, if so please enlighten me. I'm not convinced by arguments like "metamask does it".

@karalabe karalabe closed this Feb 15, 2018
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3 participants