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How do I back up and restore a private key without requiring users to remember another password?

How do I back up and restore a private key without requiring users to remember another password?

Private key backups can be unlocked using a secret known only to the user, like a password. Here's a solution based on secret questions.
Dmytro Matviiv avatar
Written by Dmytro Matviiv
Updated over a week ago

In order to back up your users' private keys, the e3kit method eThree.backupPrivateKey()  requires a password in string format to properly secure it in Virgil services. However, password authentication might be optional or nonexistent in your app.

To still accomplish this, a password can be made out of three secret questions to be selected and answered by the user. For example:

  1. In what city was your first job? New York.
  2. How was your first pet called? Pluto.
  3. What was your favorite food as a child? Pizza.

In this case, the selected questions and answers can be concatenated and normalized in lowercase to be used as a password for the backup:

"jobtown:newyork+firstpet:pluto+childfood:pizza"

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