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Topic: Bitcoin vulnerability - page 2. (Read 2500 times)

sr. member
Activity: 269
Merit: 250
January 30, 2014, 10:45:18 AM
#13
This is all FUD. The parameters in the code EK wants you to use are like saying "pick an integer between 2 and 4 and I'll guess it in one guess"  Vs saying "pick an integer between one and a trillion and I'll guess it in 1 guess."

Just like with the android PRNG bug, if you limit the search space you can easily search it. It is self evident. There is a good thread in the tech and dev section which details why it isn't an issue unless you use bad (or limited) code to generate keys.


Exactly.
For those who don't quite grasp the technology: This "vulnerability" has been and will always be there. Address collision is just very very very very unlikely unless the random number generation of the code is predictable (or you create your own private key from some phrase/input without using some form of salt to modify it).
If you are really paranoid just split your holdings into many wallets that were created with code that provides good random numbers.
In the unlikely event that you are one of the most unlucky beings in the universe and suffer from a collision at least you only lose a fraction.

A 1 second google search threw up this QA : http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/22/is-it-possible-to-brute-force-bitcoin-address-creation-in-order-to-steal-money



legendary
Activity: 2114
Merit: 1015
January 30, 2014, 10:36:24 AM
#12
This is all FUD. The parameters in the code EK wants you to use are like saying "pick an integer between 2 and 4 and I'll guess it in one guess"  Vs saying "pick an integer between one and a trillion and I'll guess it in 1 guess."

Just like with the android PRNG bug, if you limit the search space you can easily search it. It is self evident. There is a good thread in the tech and dev section which details why it isn't an issue unless you use bad (or limited) code to generate keys.


That's what I suspected. These code newbies don't know shit about PRNGs. Nevertheless, I've lately started to use http://random.org to influence the seed for my random number generators in security critical infrastructure.
legendary
Activity: 4130
Merit: 1307
January 30, 2014, 10:14:15 AM
#11
This is all FUD. The parameters in the code EK wants you to use are like saying "pick an integer between 2 and 4 and I'll guess it in one guess"  Vs saying "pick an integer between one and a trillion and I'll guess it in 1 guess."

Just like with the android PRNG bug, if you limit the search space you can easily search it. It is self evident. There is a good thread in the tech and dev section which details why it isn't an issue unless you use bad (or limited) code to generate keys.
legendary
Activity: 1246
Merit: 1000
January 30, 2014, 09:52:07 AM
#10
LOL @ FUD Cheesy

Why not quote the parts where a 50BTC reward was offered for proof (breaking any one of 200k addresses)... which they still haven't claimed. Roll Eyes
I think someone who can exploit this vulnerability will suddenly take an interest in more than 50BTC.

If there actually is a vulnerability here, you can be sure someone within the community will find it and will claim that bounty. So far I'm not worried and I think it's very likely to be a bug within the script they're running for that test.
How do you know that this particular person will have the morality to simply claim the 50 bitcoin bounty rather than using it to access 12 million bitcoins and cash out as many as he can without getting caught.

I assume not only morally void people have the brains and means to find possible exploits. If there is a vulnerability it will probably not be found by just one person who can either decide to do the right thing and claim the 50 BTC bounty or hack multiple addresses (or both). Multiple people will find this exploit if there is one and I think it's quite reasonable to assume that at least one of them will be claiming that bounty.
zby
legendary
Activity: 1592
Merit: 1001
January 30, 2014, 09:43:43 AM
#9
LOL @ FUD Cheesy

Why not quote the parts where a 50BTC reward was offered for proof (breaking any one of 200k addresses)... which they still haven't claimed. Roll Eyes

1. The condition for the reward is harder than the condition for the system failure - there are more than 200k addresses used and it is easier to find a collision in the whole bunch than in the chosen sliver.

2. As someone already said - if you have the means to cause collisions you can gain much more han 50BTC - so the 50BTC is not an incentive to stop doing it if someone knows how to do it.
hero member
Activity: 728
Merit: 500
January 30, 2014, 09:40:02 AM
#8
LOL @ FUD Cheesy

Why not quote the parts where a 50BTC reward was offered for proof (breaking any one of 200k addresses)... which they still haven't claimed. Roll Eyes
I think someone who can exploit this vulnerability will suddenly take an interest in more than 50BTC.

If there actually is a vulnerability here, you can be sure someone within the community will find it and will claim that bounty. So far I'm not worried and I think it's very likely to be a bug within the script they're running for that test.
How do you know that this particular person will have the morality to simply claim the 50 bitcoin bounty rather than using it to access 12 million bitcoins and cash out as many as he can without getting caught.
legendary
Activity: 1246
Merit: 1000
January 30, 2014, 09:32:25 AM
#7
LOL @ FUD Cheesy

Why not quote the parts where a 50BTC reward was offered for proof (breaking any one of 200k addresses)... which they still haven't claimed. Roll Eyes
I think someone who can exploit this vulnerability will suddenly take an interest in more than 50BTC.

If there actually is a vulnerability here, you can be sure someone within the community will find it and will claim that bounty. So far I'm not worried and I think it's very likely to be a bug within the script they're running for that test.
sr. member
Activity: 308
Merit: 250
January 30, 2014, 08:56:18 AM
#6
Thanks for sharing this; will definitely be looking into this.
hero member
Activity: 504
Merit: 500
Moderator
January 30, 2014, 08:10:59 AM
#5
LOL @ FUD Cheesy

Why not quote the parts where a 50BTC reward was offered for proof (breaking any one of 200k addresses)... which they still haven't claimed. Roll Eyes

This problem is quite new, few days/hours old. If somebody couldn´t do it in the last 3 days, it doesn´t mean that it couldn´t happen ever.
hero member
Activity: 728
Merit: 500
January 30, 2014, 08:08:52 AM
#4
LOL @ FUD Cheesy

Why not quote the parts where a 50BTC reward was offered for proof (breaking any one of 200k addresses)... which they still haven't claimed. Roll Eyes
I think someone who can exploit this vulnerability will suddenly take an interest in more than 50BTC.
legendary
Activity: 1092
Merit: 1001
Touchdown
January 30, 2014, 08:04:00 AM
#3
LOL @ FUD Cheesy

Why not quote the parts where a 50BTC reward was offered for proof (breaking any one of 200k addresses)... which they still haven't claimed. Roll Eyes
hero member
Activity: 504
Merit: 500
Moderator
January 30, 2014, 07:49:09 AM
#2
Holy shit, thanks for sharing.!

This will generate a big shitstorm today, you can be sure. We have to change the software and not only flag the duplicated keys, but also submit the randoms used to generate the private key. There are two possibilities to investigate before we point to ECDSA:
1) Our randoms are not random even on different machines due to the lack of entropy on them,
2) the hash of that random number is broken and it generates collisions in private keys from different random numbers.

It all breaks out to - we have to change the software to submit the random numbers we used to generate private keys, even if it means temporary interruption of mining before the server is updated not to accept the triplets without a random.

THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS DISCOVERY AND MIGHT BE WORTH A PRESS RELEASE


ALARM!


ALSO, WHAT IS CAUSING A REALLY BAD HEADACHE

In gh2k's new software you can see the duplicates are not always 0. Now we are completely generating random BTC addresses and obviously it can be observed that many people are getting some rejects.
That again indicates, that we have several people who accidently generate the same private key. This is really ALARMING as people are finding collisions in BTC Addresses. Maybe we need some stats for this at the page.


This might by a major breakthrough in the address space analysis.

Did you just say that with enough power you can access easily other people bitcoins?

Did you just say that with enough power you can access easily other people bitcoins?

That's the whole point of this "science" project. To identify exactly that. Evil even posted a few pages back how to target a specific key!
full member
Activity: 182
Merit: 100
January 30, 2014, 06:54:56 AM
#1
I've been watching this thread for a bit https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=433522.600 and they may be onto something. Allegedly, with only a bit of searching, collisions have been found of private keys, using public keys. I'm mostly in fiat for now, although I don't think any of us smaller holders need to worry that much Tongue.

Here's the site displaying live stats: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=433522.600

If there is a vulnerability, hopefully developers will look to it real soon, although the ECDSA is an integral part of bitcoin and the blockchain, and I see it as being very difficult to change, without something to revalidate all previous transactions.
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