[Whonix-devel] [tor-talk] derive onion v3 key from mnemonic seed phrase?

Wed Oct 24 15:11:28 CEST 2018

Patrick Schleizer <patrick-mailinglists at whonix.org> writes:

> Hi,
>
> is it possible to derive an hidden service onion v3 private key from a
> mnemonic seed [1]?
>
> Cheers,
> Patrick
>
> [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Seed_phrase

I think that should be possible reading
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki .

I don't think there is anything that stops us from taking the generated
onion private key, splitting it up as specified, and assigning a
mnemonic to it. You could imagine a third-party tool that just reads the
privkey file and outputs the mnemonic, or reads the mnemonic and
generates a privkey file.

Not sure if this belongs to the upstream Tor code, but I guess it if it
gains enough popularity something can be arranged ;)