Topic: info about Ian Colman mnemonic (Read 400 times)

Again, I would point people to this post from Greg Maxwell - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.56590276.

A selection of functions does nothing to address all the underlying issues outlined in the post above. The best solution is to just avoid webpage based wallet/seed/key generators.

That's interesting, so is this the issue with javascript based key generators: They use a library which does not generate sufficient entropy to have good enough randomness? Or are are there other concerns regarding JS?
Shouldn't there be a selection of RNGs available for javascript by now? Just wondering, seems a little odd to have such a massively used language without providing a secure RNG solution.

Yeah, you are correct. I mentioned function commonly used at the development of  general-purpose  apps as my brain was focused on JavaScript itself rather than on   Ian Colman mnemonic which uses in browser window.Crypto.getRandomValues. However even the latter does not  guarantee that relevant numbers are truly random.

   

To my knowledge and if the used browser does support it, the iancoleman.html script uses strong cryptography randomness functions when they are available, not only math.random(). Rather crypto.getRandomValues() is used which should give randomness more like a CSPRNG (cryptografically safe pseudo random number generator). crypto.getRandomValues() is considerably better than math.random(), though I'm no expert in this field.

Math.random of JavaScript is  PRNG (rather than TRNG) which uses algo (depends on browser)  designed  for general-purpose randomization  (needed for example at game development)   rather than for producing of true randomness suitable for cryptographic. So, entropy generated by JavaScript (and subsequently SEED phrase)  is less secure than that one generated by TRNG in hardware wallets, say in Passport 2  which utilities Avalanche diode as a source of randomness.

Ian Coleman mnemonic (used on offline machine)   is good for testing purpose rather than for generating SEED to which you will trust you stash.

Iancoleman can be used for generating a BIP39 seed phrase and deriving keys from a seed phrase.
What do you mean by a finding a private key? Do you mean you have a seed phrase and you want to derive the private key associated with an address?

some month ago, I using iancoleman script for find privatekey. but never find.
please share how to using this iancoleman script for find privatekey. 

There can be any kind of bug as JS interpreters and JIT compilers are complex pieces of software, same applies to any modern browser. And it wouldn't be the first time that there could be bugs in the PRNG. You seem stubborn to acknowledge that there could be bugs and you simply can't dismiss the existance of bugs.



You have been warned, but you're free to go ahead and ignore any advise.



Thank you for this example. It's great to show issues with trying to create true randomness, which is not easy, btw.

This might work well enough, but you can't be sure. Why is that? Well, let's assume your pieces of paper are mostly equal. If they aren't, the heavier might have a tendency to be faster at the bottom of the bag, the lighter might be statistically more often at the top of the pile in the bag. That scews the uniformity of distribution of the pieces. Can you quantify it? I guess not really. It should concern you though, not to know how much of influence this makes.

Equal flat pieces of paper might tend to stick together, maybe only two pieces of paper stick together but then maybe you end up with multiple pairs of such stickies. If they only stick together for some time during shaking, it again hinders equal distribution of the pieces during shaking.

How do you want to make sure that the way you shake gives you an equal re-distribution of the pieces?

Next variable is how and from where you grab your piece when you draw one after shaking. If you distort the piece then you change it's behavior compared to the rest of the pieces. Then not all pieces are the same anymore.

I'm not sure if you get it, but understand that what sounds to be random is actually not easy to be sure it's truely random. And for the seed of your wallet, the random entropy of 128 or 256 bits, you definitely want the entropy to be as random as possible.



I'd say, not really, as the sample space of at most 256 random bits isn't enough to get good answers by the randomness tests that exist.

Usually you test your RNG source thoroughly with large sets of samples with randomness tests (there are various) and to call your RNG a good one it should pass as many test as possible without obvious flaws. Only then you know that you can rely on your RNG to produce good random entropy as your entropy seed for your wallet.

What type of bug can there be?

This is not because something is simple that it is weak

in anyway, browser based mnemonic generators, create seed phrase. I can't see why some seed phrases are less secure than other.

For example,I could write the 2048 words each one on piece of paper. Put all in a bag, then I pick 23 times a piece of paper by placing back the paper inside the bag each time. Between each picking, I shake the bag several minutes.
I do the same to get the 24th word by taking into account the checksum

By the way is there a way to measure the randomness with which a seed phrase was generated ?

This, as I've explained several times.

On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with Ian Coleman's site. It is a useful tool, and one I use myself for exploring seed phrases and derivation paths. But javascript entropy generators are not secure. Although the site produces 128-256 bits of entropy (depending on how many words you select), I am not convinced this entropy is securely generated, and so provides less than 128-256 bits of security.

I would never use any javascript or webpage to generate a seed phrase I actually planned on using.

So in accordance to what you are saying some seed phrases are easier to guess than others.

In the Ian Coleman Mnemonic, you can check entropy details.

Time To Crack
centuries
Event Count
63
Entropy Type
hexadecimal
Avg Bits Per Event
4.00
Raw Entropy Words
21
Total Bits
252
Filtered Entropy
1fd2f279505c87ecf83b09042c0a032021abfdf566eb2ea38a09a90123ed4bc
Raw Binary
00011111110 10010111100 10011110010 10100000101 11001000011 11110110011 11100000111 01100001001 00000100001 01100000010 10000000110 01000000010 00011010101 11111110111 11010101100 11011101011 00101110101 00011100010 10000010011 01010010000 00010010001 11110110101 0010111100


Are you saying that :
1) this is not big enough entropy?
2) this is enough entropy but with JS, thiere can be bugs?
3) other things?

It is a human readable encoding of your entropy, not of your private key. The seed phrase is then passed through a number of hashing functions alongside some other data in order to deterministically produce your private keys.

Temporarily disconnecting the internet on a computer which is regularly used for various internet related tasks such as browsing and downloading achieves almost nothing. Any malware which steals seed phrases or private keys will just wait until you reconnect in order to send your data off to an attacker. For maximum safety you should be using a permanently airgapped computer.

fred21 misunderstood the process.

Seed phrase is a human-readable version of private key after encoding. We can pick a private key randomly with any tool like with coin, pencil, paper or with a wallet software and it should be picked offline.

We can use Bitcoin Core, Electrum wallet to generate a wallet, but turn off Internet connection before and when creating a wallet.

Keys, Addresses (Mastering Bitcoin)
Keys and Addresses (Learnmeabitcoin.com)
[Full Guide+Code]Seed Phrase & The Process of Deriving Bitcoin Addresses from It

If there are some unconscious but common psychological patterns/biases in your choices, don't you think someone or something(like an AI) could discover and exploit them one day, and instead of having to check 2²⁵⁶ combinations, he will just need to focus on 2^25.6 ones for example?
Personally I don't trust softwares to generate good randomness either because too many bugs/limitations have been found in the past, physical randomness is the most reliable IMO.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-fix-bitcoin-android-bug/

https://www.fourmilab.ch/random/

The checksum isn't the 24th word. The checksum in a 24 word seed phrase is the last 8 bits. This means that the first 3 bits of the last word are determined randomly and the last 8 bits are a function of your 256 bit entropy.
If you have 23 words and don't have the last word, there would be 8 possibilities for the last word.

If you're concerned about the difference between Electrum seed phrases and Bip39 seed phrases, you can use another wallet to generate your seed.  Sparrow, for example can be used to create a secure Bip39 seed phrase, and unlike Ian's tool, it uses the cpu's processing power to create entropy.

If you insist on using the Ian Coleman tool, use the advanced feature to enter your own entropy.  Here's a code that can be used to create a 256 bit HEX string that can be used to enter your own entropy.

To be exact, you would need to guess 23 words and then calculate the 24th, as it is the checksum of the 23 previous words.

Nevertheless, please don't.

On this planet, NOTHING is totally random.

In fact, scientists claim that the only thing that could be random is the age at which the center of atoms explode. (that's pure physics and it is not yet fully proven).

Our minds are absolutely not capable of defining randomness. And of course we are unable to choose 23 words from a list of 2048 in a secure random way.

If you don't want to accept that you can use a wallet such as electrum to generate the words, then you could flip a coin 256 times to generate your entropy. You can refer to this manual https://youtu.be/LxTkLwpV1Po
However, if you flip a coin 256 times, there will definitely be similarities in the manner that you flip it. So again, not totally random. I can assure you that if we had the appropriate tools to calculate all the forces that apply to the coin, we could predict the outcome. The same applies to roulette and all those "random" systems. We just don't have the tools to predict the outcome.

I may sound boring and annoying, but the summary is:  Randomness (entropy source) is the most important thing when generating a wallet. Be absolutely careful. Do it correctly once and don't worry ever again.

Because the number is being generated by different processes using different entropy sources. If your entropy source is poor, then your number won't be completely random.

This is a completely separate (and completely trivial) function to generating the seed phrase in the first place.

I don't understand why you are arguing about this, especially when it is clear you do not understand the basics. Javascript key generators are insecure. There are plenty of easy to use alternatives already suggested. Electrum, for example, is already bundled with Tails, so is trivial to use since you are planning to use Tails anyway. As I said above, you seem very keen to use an insecure javascript generator and there is nothing we can do to stop you, other than warn you of the risk.

I don't see why the number generated would be more likely to be cracked when the seed phrase has the same chance of being guessed.

Also when you use your seed phrase in the ian Coleman JS interface, the interface generate always the same addresses with the related private keys in the same order because this is deterministic. This is doing the same job as any other interface using the same protocol with the same seed phrase.
If I put the seed phrase in any other wallet, it will generate the exact same addresses in the same order with the same private keys. So on this side there is no difference between JS and the other software.

Again, the words aren't picked. Entropy is used to generate a random number, and that random number is encoded as a seed phrase.

If the random number is generated in a cryptographically secure way, then yes, the probability is the same. The point I am making is that I don't believe the Javascript function crypto.getRandomValues within a browser environment (as is the case with Ian Coleman) will generate truly cryptographically secure numbers.

Assuming that we are 10 billion people on this planet, we all decided to use Bitcoin and each of us had on average about 2000 wallets (which is a very large number), the sum of what we will get is 2.0e13 which is very far even if the wallet contains 12 words.

The problem lies if these words were not randomly chosen, and then the human brain gets used to choosing similar things and with the possibility of repeating more than one word, we will find that this possibility has become very weak, especially if social engineering is used to determine the words that you may use a lot, and therefore you will choose them to be seeds.

it is better to assume that any wallet that you did not generate or generated using your brain, or that is not randomly generated well is a hacked wallet.

If the words have been picked truly randomly, right. The point here is that if the words are chosen by human brain, then they are not random.
The correct way to generate a seed phrase is to generate a random entropy using a trustworthy software and then convert that to a seed phrase.

If there are a total of 2²⁵⁶ combinations. one combination of 24 words has the same chance of being picked than another combination of 24 words. This probability is 1 out of 2²⁵⁶ whether how it was generated if each word was picked randomly.

Yes, it absolutely does. If I have 256 bits of random entropy sourced from /dev/urandom, and you have 256 bits of entropy sourced from your browser fingerprint, then your seed phrase is exponentially weaker than mine and exponentially more likely to be broken.

Yes. It all depends on the entropy used to generate those words in the first place.

There is nothing preventing repeat words, and the last words contains a checksum, so as above there are 2²⁵⁶ combinations, not what you have written.

A 24 word BIP39 seed phrase provides 256 bits of entropy while a 12 word BIP39 seed phrase provides 128 bits of entropy. Therefore, the probability of brute-forcing a 24 word seed phrase is smaller. Of course, a 12 word seed phrase is enough and again, take note that human is not a good source of entropy.


There are 2048²³ * 8 or 2²⁵⁶ combinations.
Take note that words can be repeated and the last 8 bits are checksum.

It encodes this number generated into a seed phrase. whether it is done via JS or bitcoin Core, the resulting seed phrase has an equal chance to be guessed by someone trying every combination of words.
The entropy doesn't change the chance of guessing one seed phrase compare to another.

Are there 24 words combination from words listed in BIP 39 protocol easier to guess than other? If you pick at random those 24 words, you have the same probability to get each of those combination.   

As there are 2048 words, total number of combination is 2048x2047x2046x...x2025x2024. So when you pick one combination, you have one chance out of 2048x2047x2046x...x2025x2024 to get one specific combination independently from how it was generated

Picking random words yourself from the word list is widely recognized as highly insecure and one of the worst possible ways to generate a seed phrase. This is also absolutely not what Ian Coleman's software is doing. What Ian Coleman is actually doing is generating a pseudo-random number via crypto.getRandomValues and then encoding that in to a seed phrase. Your browser is simply not a very good source of entropy for this process. Compare this to Bitcoin Core, for example:


It is fine to not fully understand the process behind seed phrase generation or the risks which need to be considered and mitigated against. Most people don't. But you should at least try to realize this and stick to the tried, tested, and recommended methods instead.

If you are dead set on using a webpage to generate your seed phrase then ultimately, we can't stop you. But you are taking on unnecessary risk by doing so, especially when there are much safer alternatives available.

Let's dive into JS generating seed phrase.

First, I could myself generate a seed phrase without anything. I just pick 24 words from the list given in the BIP 39 protocol.
So if Ian colman give me a list of 24 words randomly in the same list what can be wrong? It is just picking word at random.

The risk maybe is the code being change to give me a list of 24 word already known by somebody. But this is hacking not JS related.

The issue is it uses Javascript.

Did you read the post hosseinimr93 linked to above? The bottom line is using Javascript is insecure and does not guarantee your safety. If you are going to all the hassle of using a live OS to set up genuine cold storage, then why would you want to use insecure code to generate your seed phrase?

Use good quality, reputable, open source wallet software such as Core, Electrum, or Sparrow. Review the code yourself if you have the ability to do so. Verify all downloads (this includes your downloads of Tails).

Yes. Tails comes with Electrum already installed, so this is very easy to do.

Do not use a browser to generate the seed phrase. Use text editor on an airgapped device.

These are the OS that you can use with Electrum: https://electrum.org/#download

You can run Electrum on airgapped device too.

I would rather download Ian Coleman mnemonic on github https://github.com/iancoleman/bip39

I use tail OS with no internet connection to generate my address.

Ian Coleman mnemonic is applying the same protocol to generate 24 words phrases and the resulting addresses as any other code. So what is the issue?

Also what would you recommend to generate BTC private Keys for cold storage? I don't trust hardware wallet.

About Electrum : Do you know if I can use it in tail OS and if it can be used like Ian Coleman to generate keys and mnemonic phrase only.

thanks

It would be safe to generate mnemonic seed from iancoleman tool if you run it offline.
Make sure you never connect this device to the internet to make sure the seed you generated from the tool is safe.

I don't heard any alternative yet on iancoleman why not generate your seed into Electrum?

I recommend you to avoid any tool that generates the keys through javascript.
click here and read gmaxwell's explanation on why it's not a good idea to use javascript for generating keys.

And it may worth mentioning that if by "without being connected to the internet", you mean just disconnecting internet when generating the keys, that's not enough. You should use an airgapped device.

Yes, it should be safe. As for the alternative then you can use Bitaddress (you can generate multiple addresses/PKs but not a seedphrase). Both sites are open source[1][2] so you can easily download and run them locally offline.

[1] https://github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org
[2] https://iancoleman.io/bip39/

Hello,

I would like to know if Ian Coleman mnemonic is still updated and safe to generate BTC address and key.

Also, are there alternative to this browser based solution?

My main goal is to generate BTC address on my own with javascript on a browser only without being connected tto the internet?

Thanks for your help