Bitcoin address re-usage can lead to theft of private keys - page 2.

bittraffic

hero member

Activity: 3038

Merit: 617

Heard of this before which its become an issue when public key is exposed where the Quantum computer can also hack the private key. I don;t really believe it but because there are many knowledgeable users recommend not reusing BTC address, it won't hurt doing so. Centralize platform though is not allowing us to generate new addresses every time.

Quote from: tranthidung on July 03, 2022, 09:12:07 PM

Quantum computers are things used to spread fear about Bitcoin. It started years ago and now still can not break Bitcoin private keys. Do you really think that Bitcoin protocol won't be upgraded over time in order to be better for itself and to protect itself from potential attacks, exclusively Quantum computers.

I find the pattern already that every bear market, a topic like this comes on top in the forum. Must be the users spreading the fud.

pooya87

legendary

Activity: 3472

Merit: 10611

The short answer is you are wrong.
The fundamentals of asymmetric cryptography is based on the fact that you can and should reveal your public key and signature without any risk of your private keys being compromised specially if ECDSA is used. If there were any risks then it would make the whole system obsolete not just reused addresses.
The only serious issue with reused addresses is a privacy related one.

BlockchainMentors

jr. member

Activity: 51

Merit: 1

By the strength of encryption, knowing the bitcoin address does not give access to the bitcoins associated with the address. Only the private key can be used to access bitcoins. This is why you never give your private keys to anyone else. It is like an email address. The private key is the password for your email address. Anyone can send email to your email address and it's publicly visible, but only someone who holds the email address password can send email from that account. This is called public-key encryption.

tranthidung

legendary

Activity: 2520

Merit: 4355

Farewell o_e_l_e_o

Quote from: Majestic-milf on July 03, 2022, 04:17:20 PM

1. It is quite harmful to one's privacy and becomes an impediment to BTC censorship resistance

It is why we have changed addresses and there is advice to use changed addresses and avoid to reuse addresses.

Address reuse
Change address
Check privacy with blockchair.com: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/privacy-o-meter (I don't recommend you to paste your address there to check, it is risky because your data will be collected by them)
- Another alternative: https://blockstream.info/

Quote

2. It can leave one open to niche attacks and one becomes vulnerable to these cyber thieves who will extract private keys from signatures after a transaction has been made.

Do you know that a process from Private key > Public Key > Public (Receiving) address is a one-way process.

Quote

3. Quantum computers could extract private keys if these addresses are re used.

Quantum computers are things used to spread fear about Bitcoin. It started years ago and now still can not break Bitcoin private keys. Do you really think that Bitcoin protocol won't be upgraded over time in order to be better for itself and to protect itself from potential attacks, exclusively Quantum computers.

franky1

legendary

Activity: 4424

Merit: 4794

here is the thing

satoshi had funds on a public key, not a public key hash. but a public key(the deemed riskier of the lot)
(see his coin reward in block 9)
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/12cbQLTFMXRnSzktFkuoG3eHoMeFtpTu3S?page=11

he spent the funds and returned left over change of funds to the same key.. and then spent them again.. and again
meaning there are about 5-6 signatures that exist associated with that public key..

here is the thing.. no one in 12 years has been able to brute that public key..
and there are funds that still remain on it, even today. not spent since 2009

as for privacy.. even now people still dont know who satoshi is

if anyone is game/up for it.. give it a shot.. there are 18coins up for grabs on that key that has a few signatures publicly available to try to use as a brute source of info from.... have a go.. see how realistic it is to brute a re-used address.
(hint many have tried)

darkv0rt3x

hero member

Activity: 1274

Merit: 681

I rather die on my feet than to live on my knees

This is one of those questions... Just compute the number of addresses that can ever exist and use one address per transaction. There is no need to reuse addresses multiple times. There are companies dedicated to blockchain analysis and there are already sites measuring the level of privacy of addresses/transactions and mentioning the most probable reasons for lower scores!

DaveF

legendary

Activity: 3500

Merit: 6320

Crypto Swap Exchange

Quote from: Majestic-milf on July 03, 2022, 04:17:20 PM

Its no longer news of how cyber crimes is slowly creeping in on digital currencies and to this end, Bitcoin experts advise that the usage of Bitcoin addresses should be done once as it helps to curb the risk of users giving up vital information that could prove costly in the future.
Continuous use of this addresses can prove to be a bad idea for three reasons:

1. It is quite harmful to one's privacy and becomes an impediment to BTC censorship resistance
2. It can leave one open to niche attacks and one becomes vulnerable to these cyber thieves who will extract private keys from signatures after a transaction has been made.
3. Quantum computers could extract private keys if these addresses are re used.
Citing an instance of the Ronin network incidence in March, where $540m worth of cryptocurrency was carted away by thieves hopefully by finding a collision of randomly picked message digest of 2¹³⁰+1 input of hashes causing possible collides by examining the square root of the number of possible output. Making re-use of Bitcoin addresses risky considering the chances of possible collisions even though the entire process might be time consuming hackers might choose to patiently wait till a collision is found just like the case of Ronin network..

1) 1/2 false. It does hurt one's privacy but it does not matter to censorship. If a service wants to block you or an address it will. They will have an easier time if you keep using the same address but all you need to do is generate a new address or a few thousand new addresses.

2) Nope it does not work this way. There are always people talking about it, but it's not something to worry about.

3) A has nothing to do with B. If quantum computers ever get to the point of being able to do something like that (probably not in our lifetimes) the entire encryption of BTC would be broken. Would not matter if it's one transaction or 1000s of transactions to and from an address. And Roniis is a side chain of an altcoin. Has nothing to do with BTC.

-Dave

PrimeNumber7

copper member

Activity: 1666

Merit: 1901

Amazon Prime Member #7

Quote from: Majestic-milf on July 03, 2022, 04:17:20 PM

2. It can leave one open to niche attacks and one becomes vulnerable to these cyber thieves who will extract private keys from signatures after a transaction has been made.

This is not actually possible. Many people frequently reuse addresses, including businesses that hold billions of dollars worth of coin.

Quote

3. Quantum computers could extract private keys if these addresses are re used.

QC may allow for the private keys to be calculated from the signature, but this is still far away. In fact, it may be possible for QC to calculate the private key in less time than it takes for a transaction to get confirmed, but again, this is something that is far away, probably decades, but when it is here, the lack of reusing addresses is not going to prevent your money from being lost.

Stalker22

legendary

Activity: 1526

Merit: 1359

Quote from: Majestic-milf on July 03, 2022, 04:17:20 PM

Its no longer news of how cyber crimes is slowly creeping in on digital currencies and to this end, Bitcoin experts advise that the usage of Bitcoin addresses should be done once as it helps to curb the risk of users giving up vital information that could prove costly in the future.

What experts? Can you cite the sources on the basis of which you came to this conclusion?

Quote from: Majestic-milf on July 03, 2022, 04:17:20 PM

Continuous use of this addresses can prove to be a bad idea for three reasons:

Number one (privacy) is the only valid reason as far as I am concerned. Two and three are complete nonsense.

edgycorner

sr. member

Activity: 1064

Merit: 382

Hurrah for Karamazov!

AFAIK, the ronin network was compromised because it wasn't truly decentralized. There were only 9 validators, and the "hacker" got access to 5 of them. 4 from Sky Mavis system, which was used to push the withdrawal and was signed by another compromised fifth validator(Axie DAO, which had a vulnerability in their gas-free RPC node).
It has nothing to do with just "private keys" being hacked. It was an internal play 100%

As for Quantum computers, they are not at that level yet. There's no way Cheesy

jackg

copper member

Activity: 2856

Merit: 3071

https://bit.ly/387FXHi lightning theory

2 doesn't make sense, you can't extract a private key from a signature because there isn't one there.

Your private key encrypts what is meant to be signed (which can then be decrypted by your public key - which is provided in the transaction). The only way your private key could be bruteforced would be by number 3, which is a future concern but currently isn't as long as the private keys were created properly.

JeromeTash

legendary

Activity: 2394

Merit: 1276

Heisenberg

Quote from: Majestic-milf on July 03, 2022, 04:17:20 PM

1. It is quite harmful to one's privacy

This is the only reason I know why address Reuse is not a good idea

Quote from: Majestic-milf on July 03, 2022, 04:17:20 PM

2. It can leave one open to niche attacks and one becomes vulnerable to these cyber thieves who will extract private keys from signatures after a transaction has been made.

Can you tell us how this is done?

Quote from: Majestic-milf on July 03, 2022, 04:17:20 PM

3. Quantum computers could extract private keys if these addresses are re used.
Citing an instance of the Ronin network incidence in March, where $540m worth of cryptocurrency was carted away by thieves hopefully by finding a collision of randomly picked message digest of 2¹³⁰+1 input of hashes causing possible collides by examining the square root of the number of possible output. Making re-use of Bitcoin addresses risky considering the chances of possible collisions even though the entire process might be time consuming hackers might choose to patiently wait till a collision is found just like the case of Ronin network..

Or maybe Ronin network just messed up and gave away their private keys to the hackers otherwise if this was possible, Don't you think so many addresses holding large amounts of Bitcoin would have been hacked by now?

Majestic-milf

hero member

Activity: 1008

Merit: 629

Its no longer news of how cyber crimes is slowly creeping in on digital currencies and to this end, Bitcoin experts advise that the usage of Bitcoin addresses should be done once as it helps to curb the risk of users giving up vital information that could prove costly in the future.
Continuous use of this addresses can prove to be a bad idea for three reasons:

1. It is quite harmful to one's privacy and becomes an impediment to BTC censorship resistance
2. It can leave one open to niche attacks and one becomes vulnerable to these cyber thieves who will extract private keys from signatures after a transaction has been made.
3. Quantum computers could extract private keys if these addresses are re used.
Citing an instance of the Ronin network incidence in March, where $540m worth of cryptocurrency was carted away by thieves hopefully by finding a collision of randomly picked message digest of 2¹³⁰+1 input of hashes causing possible collides by examining the square root of the number of possible output. Making re-use of Bitcoin addresses risky considering the chances of possible collisions even though the entire process might be time consuming hackers might choose to patiently wait till a collision is found just like the case of Ronin network..https://www.google.com/url?q=https://support.bitcoin.com/en/articles/3542797-reusing-addresses&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjh___X4934AhUNVfEDHQ7dBCoQFnoECAsQAg&usg=AOvVaw1hWrSxapVVOACYyKI8RwcX

Topic: Bitcoin address re-usage can lead to theft of private keys - page 2. (Read 413 times)