# Can I use any number as an ECC key?

I've been looking into elliptic curve cryptography, and have been trying to understand how I can and can't use it. Note that this is a hobby project and I am not making my own crypto systems for anything serious.

I am attempting to create an elliptic curve key pair that is dependent on outputs from other cryptographic functions. As far as I understand it, an key in ECC is based on a single point on the curve, as opposed to RSA which uses a pair of primes.

Does this mean that I can use random bits (or hash outputs) of the correct length as the private key of a curve such as Curve25519?

I've struggled to find information on this topic, but I do know that the soon-to-be released system SQRL (https://www.grc.com/sqrl/crypto.htm, "SQRL's underlying crypto technology") mentions using such a system. If I haven't understood it right, how is this working?

## migrated from security.stackexchange.comMar 15 '18 at 22:00

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• Please don't ever link to GRC. That is a snake oil website of the worst kind. Note also that SQRL has been fatally broken. See here and here. – forest Mar 16 '18 at 6:35
• Thanks for bringing that to my attention, I wasn't aware of the problems with GRC. I guess I should be more careful and do my research! – Daniel Causebrook Mar 16 '18 at 18:59

In the Diffie–Hellman function X25519, a secret key is traditionally an arbitrary string of 256 bits, with some bits masked so that the Curve25519 scalar is a uniform random choice of a multiple of 8 between $2^{254}$ and $2^{255}$ for a couple of reasons: [1], [2].