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Topic: Bad signatures leading to 55.82152538 BTC theft (so far) (Read 65144 times)

staff
Activity: 4242
Merit: 8672
He waited 4 years to try to avoid detection.
Unless I'm missing something the party moving these coins may not be the thief... he could have sold them or deposited them in an exchange 4 years ago and they're just moving now.
sr. member
Activity: 471
Merit: 256
As of August 24th, the funds are on the move. He waited 4 years to try to avoid detection.

https://blockchain.info/address/1HKywxiL4JziqXrzLKhmB6a74ma6kxbSDj
legendary
Activity: 2646
Merit: 1137
All paid signature campaigns should be banned.
That paper says that without /dev/random devices (what is a very rare case I believe) SecureRandom use only 31 bits of entropy. It is a horrible situation, but even in this case it is very unlikely that there will be two equal random numbers in signature creation in the whole world.

Given good "enough" secure random number generation the ECDSA used by Bitcoin works.  Bad random numbers, especially repeated numbers, is fatal to the ECDSA used by Bitcoin.

It has been suggested we move to a new ECDSA algorithm that does not use a random nonce.  We should.
legendary
Activity: 2912
Merit: 1060
Damn I still use Netscape 4
legendary
Activity: 1792
Merit: 1111
By the way its not really an upper limit: n+1 is a pretty valid private key, it's just that it's equal to 1 (as n+1 mod n == 1 mod n)
If you generate that way you will end up with keys which are not equiprobable. The difference from uniform is very small, but its a certificational weakness you should avoid.

Is the version of securerandom.js used at bitaddress.org safe? https://github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org/blob/master/src/securerandom.js

I personally don't trust any computer generated random number. All my addresses are generated with other methods with 256bit entropy
donator
Activity: 2772
Merit: 1019
Depends mostly upon where your browser gets it's values for Math.random() from I guess. This is quite off-topic however...

The part about Netscape4 is a bit weird, I wonder how often that triggers.

netscape4 ?

EDIT: sorry, I see. You're talking about the linked code.
legendary
Activity: 2618
Merit: 1007
Depends mostly upon where your browser gets it's values for Math.random() from I guess. This is quite off-topic however...

The part about Netscape4 is a bit weird, I wonder how often that triggers.
legendary
Activity: 1064
Merit: 1000
By the way its not really an upper limit: n+1 is a pretty valid private key, it's just that it's equal to 1 (as n+1 mod n == 1 mod n)
If you generate that way you will end up with keys which are not equiprobable. The difference from uniform is very small, but its a certificational weakness you should avoid.

Is the version of securerandom.js used at bitaddress.org safe? https://github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org/blob/master/src/securerandom.js
staff
Activity: 4242
Merit: 8672
By the way its not really an upper limit: n+1 is a pretty valid private key, it's just that it's equal to 1 (as n+1 mod n == 1 mod n)
If you generate that way you will end up with keys which are not equiprobable. The difference from uniform is very small, but its a certificational weakness you should avoid.
sr. member
Activity: 310
Merit: 253
^Ah, I see. Thanks!
legendary
Activity: 1176
Merit: 1280
May Bitcoin be touched by his Noodly Appendage
What is the value range for k?

k must be between 1 and p where:

p = FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFE FFFFFC2F

    = 2^256 − 2^32 − 2^9 − 2^8 − 2^7 − 2^6 − 2^4 − 1


This largest value is different from the one mentioned in the wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key), which is  0xFFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFE BAAE DCE6 AF48 A03B BFD2 5E8C D036 4141. The exact number is not very important, but just out of curiosity, which is the right one?
The latter
What you wrote is n and is the upper limit
p is just the prims number you use when doing EC operations

By the way its not really an upper limit: n+1 is a pretty valid private key, it's just that it's equal to 1 (as n+1 mod n == 1 mod n)
sr. member
Activity: 310
Merit: 253
What is the value range for k?

k must be between 1 and p where:

p = FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFE FFFFFC2F

    = 2^256 − 2^32 − 2^9 − 2^8 − 2^7 − 2^6 − 2^4 − 1


This largest value is different from the one mentioned in the wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key), which is  0xFFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFE BAAE DCE6 AF48 A03B BFD2 5E8C D036 4141. The exact number is not very important, but just out of curiosity, which is the right one?
newbie
Activity: 29
Merit: 0
Check this out: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2968228 ... I don't think Android was the cause of most of the bad signatures seen recently (despite it's problems).
donator
Activity: 2772
Merit: 1019
I know this is an extremely rough estimage, but guesstimating from Number of Transactions excl. popular we can speculate that roughly 20 kBTC have been moved from android wallets (assuming the spike is just that).

55 / 20k = 0.2% of funds stolen due to the bad RNG... could've been worse. I feel with the people who lost money, of course.

Is there any evidence theft is the cause of the spike, or is this pure speculation? 

Couldn't a spike just as easily been caused by a large number users rotating keys (as would be expected when an updated is pushed out)?

yeah, that's what I tried to say. Spike caused by key rotations.

Or, given the volatility of that graph, couldn't it have likely just been noise?

Yep. At the time I posted it looked more "spikey". It could still be noise or something else of course. But it's pretty clear that people moved their money. Hard to say how much, of course.
newbie
Activity: 2
Merit: 0
I know this is an extremely rough estimage, but guesstimating from Number of Transactions excl. popular we can speculate that roughly 20 kBTC have been moved from android wallets (assuming the spike is just that).

55 / 20k = 0.2% of funds stolen due to the bad RNG... could've been worse. I feel with the people who lost money, of course.

Is there any evidence theft is the cause of the spike, or is this pure speculation? 

Couldn't a spike just as easily been caused by a large number users rotating keys (as would be expected when an updated is pushed out)?

Or, given the volatility of that graph, couldn't it have likely just been noise?
donator
Activity: 2772
Merit: 1019
I know this is an extremely rough estimage, but guesstimating from Number of Transactions excl. popular we can speculate that roughly 20 kBTC have been moved from android wallets (assuming the spike is just that).

55 / 20k = 0.2% of funds stolen due to the bad RNG... could've been worse. I feel with the people who lost money, of course.

As of today only 51% of users of the Blockchain.info app have upgraded to a patched release, if the pattern is similar with other apps a fair number of wallets might still be vulnerable. But you are right it definitely could have been worse.

This is easy to figure out since one could simply screen the blockchain for bad signatures.

I don't understand what you mean. Obviously not all signatures made by android wallets are bad.
legendary
Activity: 1792
Merit: 1111
I know this is an extremely rough estimage, but guesstimating from Number of Transactions excl. popular we can speculate that roughly 20 kBTC have been moved from android wallets (assuming the spike is just that).

55 / 20k = 0.2% of funds stolen due to the bad RNG... could've been worse. I feel with the people who lost money, of course.

As of today only 51% of users of the Blockchain.info app have upgraded to a patched release, if the pattern is similar with other apps a fair number of wallets might still be vulnerable. But you are right it definitely could have been worse.

This is easy to figure out since one could simply screen the blockchain for bad signatures.
hero member
Activity: 910
Merit: 1005
I know this is an extremely rough estimage, but guesstimating from Number of Transactions excl. popular we can speculate that roughly 20 kBTC have been moved from android wallets (assuming the spike is just that).

55 / 20k = 0.2% of funds stolen due to the bad RNG... could've been worse. I feel with the people who lost money, of course.

As of today only 51% of users of the Blockchain.info app have upgraded to a patched release, if the pattern is similar with other apps a fair number of wallets might still be vulnerable. But you are right it definitely could have been worse.
donator
Activity: 2772
Merit: 1019
I know this is an extremely rough estimage, but guesstimating from Number of Transactions excl. popular we can speculate that roughly 20 kBTC have been moved from android wallets (assuming the spike is just that).

55 / 20k = 0.2% of funds stolen due to the bad RNG... could've been worse. I feel with the people who lost money, of course.
hero member
Activity: 524
Merit: 500
So I guess the answer lies somewhere in the changelogs for the affected projects.
Hire incompetent manager, let him hire incompetent programmers, wait for suitable defect, withhold testcase from QA lab half globe away from your headquarter, enjoy plausible deniability.
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