Why do the sale webpage and python command-line tool produce very differently-sized encseeds?

spraff

I have been experimenting with the python command-line utilities by running

git clone https://github.com/ethereum/pyethsaletool
pyethsaletool/pyethsaletool.py genwallet

This consistentlyproduces 129-character encseed values.

I also tried downloading a wallet by clicking "buy ether" on ethereum.org and got a wallet with a 1249-byte encseed.

Why the huge difference? I am now suspicious of the command-line tools!

(Incidentally, shouldn't they also be using something like Crypto.Random rather than os.urandom?)

Martinkrung

I just experienced the same, any answers? Maybe move this post to " ether sale"

VitalikButerin

The JS website uses mouse movement for entropy, which needs to contain much more data in order to be secure. The Python app uses os.urandom, which is pretty universally accepted (see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2541742/most-secure-way-to-generate-a-random-session-id-for-a-cookie ) for cryptographically secure random number generation and should provide optimally unpredictable entropy out of the box. Hence in Python only 32 bytes of entropy are really needed.