jfreegman/colour-keys

Transform a key into a colour-coded image, then back into a key

Colour-Keys

Transforms a hexadecimal key into a colourful encoded image, and allows for reversal of the process to obtain the original key. This allows for a simple means of public key exchange, much like a .pub file, but more stylish (in my opinion).

How it works

make_keyimg() takes a string as input, such as: "2c349b1cbe1fe87546fcb28f35ee4b1674a0fbcaaea861da7c63ef224008b1e258354ffed963"

and produces an image like this:

extract_keyimg() does the reverse; it reads an image produced by make_keyimg() and returns a string containing the encoded public key.

Notes

• The template image could be virtually anything; I wrote it with the ProjectTox messenger in mind, hence the logo and file extensions
• This is only a proof of concept thrown together in a couple days, and as such may contain bugs.
• One known bug/flaw is that a key where a pixel is made up of the background colour (e.g. #ffffff for a white background) will not be extracted correctly. Despite being over a 1 in a million chance, a special case must be made with key generation to ensure integrity.
• The unit test can be used by running the command make