[openssl-users] How to get a bye or word from BIGNUM in OpenSSL 1.1?

[Jeffrey Walton]

On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 12:38 AM, Jakob Bohm <jb-openssl at wisemo.com> wrote:
> On 02/08/2017 04:21, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
>>
>> I'm trying to extract the low-order byte or word from a BIGNUM in
>> OpenSSL 1.1. We were told to use BN_bn2binpad, but its not clear to me
>> how to specify the location we want to extract.
>>
>> For example:
>>
>>      const char v[] = "ffeeddccbbaa99887766554433221100";
>>      BIGNUM n = BN_new();
>>
>>      if (BN_hex2bn(&n, v))
>>      {
>>          fprintf(stderr, "failed to parse BIGNUM\n");
>>          exit (1);
>>      }
>>
>> I don't see how to get the low-order word 33221100, or the second to
>> last byte 11.
>>
>> Here' the documentation but I don't see how to do it:
>> https://www.openssl.org/docs/man1.1.0/crypto/BN_bn2binpad.html. Other
>> libraries, like Java, Botan and Crypto++ allow us to specify a potion
>> to extract from in cases like these.
>>
>> How do we extract bytes or words from a BIGNUM?
>>
>> Thanks in advance.
>
> BN_bn2binpad (and it's friends) always give you *all* the bytes
> in the number in a buffer of you own.  You can then extract the
> bytes from there.
>
> If you care mostly about the least significant bytes, using
> BN_bn2lebinpad may be easier than BN_bn2binpad, as the least
> significant bytes will be first, not last, in the result.

Thanks.

It would be nice if the OpenSSL devs ate their own dogfood and
suffered that inefficient crap. I would wager that crap would change.

Jeff