Did Satoshi foresee that secp256r1 was compromised? - page 2.

drawingthesun

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Quote from: Mike Hearn on January 11, 2011, 05:31:40 PM

I discussed this with Satoshi. There is no particular reason why secp256k1 is used. It just happened to be around at the time.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/secp256k1-2699

Yeah I saw that, but if he knew that secp256r1 was possibly compromised he might have wanted to divert the conversation and hide his real reason for using secp256k1. (He probably knew that if he started talking about how secp256r1 was compromised people would see him as a nut case and that could undermine bitcoin in the early years)

Kluge

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Quote from: bitanarchy on January 12, 2011, 12:35:34 PM

I also discussed with satoshi, and he said that his employers at the NSA wanted him to create the first P2P currency with a back door in it. That back door happens to be in this specific elliptic curve. Government supercomputers searched for a random elliptic curve that contained a back door.

Just joking, but that's my conspiracy theory. Actually if there is no particular reason for this elliptic curve to be chosen, that is actually suspicious...

We can't do anything but speculate, though. Earlier, it's said Satoshi picked it "just because."

drawingthesun

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It would be kind of genius if the reason Bitcoin does not use secp256r1 was because Satoshi knew about its possible weaknesses.

Weaknesses discussion: http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/09/11/1224252/are-the-nist-standard-elliptic-curves-back-doored?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Bruce Schneier no longer trusts the numbers used to create the curves. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/the_nsa_is_brea.html#c1675929

And going back to this discussion about why secp256k1 was used instead of secp256r1 is it possible that Satoshi knew the secp256r1 was compromised?
https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=2699.0

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