This thread seems to have gone horribly off the rails. If you want to have a discussion about particular users, take it to Scam Accusations, Reputation, or Meta. Flame wars are not welcome here.
/Locked
Topic: There are 2^256 private keys out there: how big is that number? (Read 2444 times)
August 04, 2022, 09:02:00 AM
take the pills, you need them
August 04, 2022, 09:00:02 AM
WTF, are people actually defending brainwallets in the development forum? Did I wander into the newbie forum by mistake?
Fact: Brainwallets were popularized by a wallet thief, who created the brainwallet-dot-org site to trick people into creating insecure wallets for him to crack.
NotATether, you basically just don’t know what you are talking about here. The handwavy scheme that you vaguely describe is not what most people call a “brainwallet”, although it is insecure “squish” (to adapt and extend a term from John Denker). It is in poor taste for you to suggest that you would charge money to create it, when you are wasting my time; I should send you a bill if I need to explain this to you. Tip address is in my signature.
Under nooblius doctrine, the fact that you even think of such a horrible crime makes you a thief. Desist at once and report to your local Ministry of Truth office for mandatory brainwashing.
And you? You are not a developer. Your technical skills are nil. In my experience, you find it too troublesome to verify a PGP signature. Your disreputable Reputation troll playpen is over this way: → suchmoon demonstrates exemplary professionalism.
I strongly disagree with that statement; but I want to assure you that this forum is day by day ever less representative of Bitcoin.
In particular, the “people” who are rationalizing wallet-thievery on grounds of if you find some keys, the money is “legitimately” yours! would be drop-kicked from any Bitcoin Core developer discussion. Bitcoin Core developers are professionals. They have a high standard of ethics. They take seriously their mission to maintain the most secure financial network in the world.
I notice that other than a few exceptions (such as those who are forum staff, and a few others), many Core developers’ forum accounts have been inactive or rarely active for years—and some of the newer leading Core developers do not even seem to have accounts on this forum, insofar as I can ascertain. That saddens me, for this is Satoshi’s forum; and some excellent-quality technical discussion still happens here. But seeing these types ofdiscussions amateur-hour dumpster fires, I am not surprised.
If you want to see what Bitcoin development is like, and the character of the people who are building Bitcoin, go lurk in the places where development happens nowadays.
I may reply another time to some of the other things you said; but it is diverging quite far from the topic here. It converges with some of the things I would otherwise be writing about, if my time were not being wasted here. Please feel free to watch for my posts elsewhere, if you are curious.
Meanwhile, I cannot help but be amused at the caliber of minds going bonkers here, and evidently projecting their own psychological problems onto me:
another symptom that you are sick
Giving merits to a banned account is not normal
you still have time to take the pills
It is the only appropriate thing in your post—just not the way that you intended.
Fact: Brainwallets were popularized by a wallet thief, who created the brainwallet-dot-org site to trick people into creating insecure wallets for him to crack.
Or, per my aphorism: So-called “brainwallets” are wallets for the brainless. I propose renaming to brainlesswallets.
NotATether, you basically just don’t know what you are talking about here. The handwavy scheme that you vaguely describe is not what most people call a “brainwallet”, although it is insecure “squish” (to adapt and extend a term from John Denker). It is in poor taste for you to suggest that you would charge money to create it, when you are wasting my time; I should send you a bill if I need to explain this to you. Tip address is in my signature.
Does anyone want to pay me to build a program that takes all the words posted on this page of the thread, generate a brain wallet on each of them, concatenating duplicate words onto themselves as they are encountered, and proceed to demonstrate that even with this creative way of brute forcing address, you won't happen upon anything, zilch, nada? 
Just to demonstrate how large all the avenues are (say, 18 million dictionary words squared)? /sarcasm
Or perhaps I can just take all permutations of all words on this page from 1 word to the entire set, and fry all data centers' computing capacity for the next 1000 years?
Just to demonstrate how large all the avenues are (say, 18 million dictionary words squared)?
/sarcasmOr perhaps I can just take all permutations of all words on this page from 1 word to the entire set, and fry all data centers' computing capacity for the next 1000 years?
Under nooblius doctrine, the fact that you even think of such a horrible crime makes you a thief. Desist at once and report to your local Ministry of Truth office for mandatory brainwashing.
And you? You are not a developer. Your technical skills are nil. In my experience, you find it too troublesome to verify a PGP signature. Your disreputable Reputation troll playpen is over this way: → suchmoon demonstrates exemplary professionalism.
I need to stress more and more, that bitcoin is not crypto it is against crypto! It is anti-crypto! It is live because crypto was not able to go live, it tried for decades but failed to go live. Am I clear enough? NO?
I strongly disagree with that statement; but I want to assure you that this forum is day by day ever less representative of Bitcoin.
In particular, the “people” who are rationalizing wallet-thievery on grounds of if you find some keys, the money is “legitimately” yours! would be drop-kicked from any Bitcoin Core developer discussion. Bitcoin Core developers are professionals. They have a high standard of ethics. They take seriously their mission to maintain the most secure financial network in the world.
I notice that other than a few exceptions (such as those who are forum staff, and a few others), many Core developers’ forum accounts have been inactive or rarely active for years—and some of the newer leading Core developers do not even seem to have accounts on this forum, insofar as I can ascertain. That saddens me, for this is Satoshi’s forum; and some excellent-quality technical discussion still happens here. But seeing these types of
If you want to see what Bitcoin development is like, and the character of the people who are building Bitcoin, go lurk in the places where development happens nowadays.
I may reply another time to some of the other things you said; but it is diverging quite far from the topic here. It converges with some of the things I would otherwise be writing about, if my time were not being wasted here. Please feel free to watch for my posts elsewhere, if you are curious.
Meanwhile, I cannot help but be amused at the caliber of minds going bonkers here, and evidently projecting their own psychological problems onto me:
another symptom that you are sick
Giving merits to a banned account is not normal
you still have time to take the pills
It is the only appropriate thing in your post—just not the way that you intended.
August 03, 2022, 11:09:50 AM
Does anyone want to pay me to build a program that takes all the words posted on this page of the thread, generate a brain wallet on each of them, concatenating duplicate words onto themselves as they are encountered, and proceed to demonstrate that even with this creative way of brute forcing address, you won't happen upon anything, zilch, nada?
Just to demonstrate how large all the avenues are (say, 18 million dictionary words squared)? /sarcasm
Or perhaps I can just take all permutations of all words on this page from 1 word to the entire set, and fry all data centers' computing capacity for the next 1000 years?
Just to demonstrate how large all the avenues are (say, 18 million dictionary words squared)?
/sarcasmOr perhaps I can just take all permutations of all words on this page from 1 word to the entire set, and fry all data centers' computing capacity for the next 1000 years?
Under nooblius doctrine, the fact that you even think of such a horrible crime makes you a thief. Desist at once and report to your local Ministry of Truth office for mandatory brainwashing.
August 03, 2022, 07:36:25 AM
Does anyone want to pay me to build a program that takes all the words posted on this page of the thread, generate a brain wallet on each of them, concatenating duplicate words onto themselves as they are encountered, and proceed to demonstrate that even with this creative way of brute forcing address, you won't happen upon anything, zilch, nada?
Just to demonstrate how large all the avenues are (say, 18 million dictionary words squared)? /sarcasm
Or perhaps I can just take all permutations of all words on this page from 1 word to the entire set, and fry all data centers' computing capacity for the next 1000 years?
Just to demonstrate how large all the avenues are (say, 18 million dictionary words squared)?
/sarcasmOr perhaps I can just take all permutations of all words on this page from 1 word to the entire set, and fry all data centers' computing capacity for the next 1000 years?
August 03, 2022, 03:47:23 AM
@aliashraf, partly agreed and partly disagreed. Technologists do generally have a tendency to think of technologies in isolation, without considering philosophical, legal, and social aspects. Please see my discussion above and below about Bitcoin’s nature as a bearer instrument. However, I also disagree with your characterization of Bitcoin and especially, with your deprecation of cryptography.
Aside...
I have known for the past nine years that zero-knowledge proofs will take over the world. For nine years, I have yearned to get zero-knowledge proofs into Bitcoin. Satoshi himself knew that zero-knowledge proofs could improve Bitcoin; he simply didn’t know how to imply them here, and the breakthrough cryptographic advances didn’t happen until 2013–2014. I was an early adopter, and suffered some bleeding-edge problems around 2017–2018; only in 2022, after many further advances, I am ready to declare the technology mature for general adoption and usage. I have been making many preparations; and some of my forthcoming posts will be exactly on that topic. That, which is of world-moving importance, is being delayed and having my time stolen away by this, which is a spectacular failure of community responsibility.
Your, bitcoin as a bearer asset, is a plausible legal doctrine; I've frequently used an argument like this to refute both sides in 2016 debate about Craig Wright claims, when it was considered that ownership status of keys for (presumed) Satoshi wallets would be a strong enough evidence to prove or reject his claim, I pointed out that the keys would have nothing to do with identity, the latter being a more sophisticated social problem. Aside...
or how trending is zk proof fantasies which are supposed to be the next BIG thing (total madness),
I have known for the past nine years that zero-knowledge proofs will take over the world. For nine years, I have yearned to get zero-knowledge proofs into Bitcoin.
That said,
I need to reiterate my deep concerns about cryptography reign in bitcoin: This wallet theft attempts claiming legitimacy is just a stupid boldness, and you have spotted it just because it is bold, but cryptocult and its reign in bitcoin has more sneaky consequences which are poisoning everything, distracting everyone, including you bro, I'm sorry.
I need to stress more and more, that bitcoin is not crypto it is against crypto! It is anti-crypto! It is live because crypto was not able to go live, it tried for decades but failed to go live. Am I clear enough? NO? Let's check the same post you quoted from Satoshi:
This is a very interesting topic. If a solution was found, a much better, easier, more convenient implementation of Bitcoin would be possible*.
Originally, a coin can be just a chain of signatures. With a timestamp service, the old ones could be dropped eventually before there's too much backtrace fan-out, or coins could be kept individually or in denominations. It's the need to check for the absence of double-spends that requires global knowledge of all transactions.
The challenge is, how do you prove that no other spends exist? **It seems a node must know about all transactions to be able to verify that. If it only knows the hash of the in/outpoints, it can't check the signatures to see if an outpoint has been spent before. Do you have any ideas on this?
It's hard to think of how to apply zero-knowledge-proofs in this case.
We're trying to prove the absence of something, which seems to require knowing about all and checking that the something isn't included.
Originally, a coin can be just a chain of signatures. With a timestamp service, the old ones could be dropped eventually before there's too much backtrace fan-out, or coins could be kept individually or in denominations. It's the need to check for the absence of double-spends that requires global knowledge of all transactions.
The challenge is, how do you prove that no other spends exist? **It seems a node must know about all transactions to be able to verify that. If it only knows the hash of the in/outpoints, it can't check the signatures to see if an outpoint has been spent before. Do you have any ideas on this?
It's hard to think of how to apply zero-knowledge-proofs in this case.
We're trying to prove the absence of something, which seems to require knowing about all and checking that the something isn't included.
* If it was possible to prove asset ownership with pure cryptography, Bitcoin would be an irrelevant, too complex system a waste of energy.
** Remember, it is all about double-spends!
But you read this post, more crypto-friendly because cryptographers have taken over (without any virtue) by poisoning the literature. It is absolutely paradoxical to stay with bitcoin and to put faith in mathemagical crypto tricks. No crypto-trick will ever touch double-spending.
August 03, 2022, 02:04:19 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora%27s_box
still continue in your meaningless actions (for a 2019 posts.... really)
no one forbids you
but when you throw a stone into a pond, it causes changes
honestly if I have to live in a context where any bona fide action has to be blamed by black hats (you don't even know what black hats are apparently, because you are ignorant) then we should live in a constant "witch hunt" tension
do you want this climate in the forum? I do not
I did not expect such behavior from you, for months you have been throwing random red tags, history says so
you are so nervous that you have tagged me for no reason and then as a hypocrite you accuse me of giving red trust at random
bravo!
https://archive.ph/96yDW
another symptom that you are sick
Giving merits to a banned account is not normal
you still have time to take the pills
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=159476;page=trusted&dt
the funny thing is that you gave red to fillippone but not to the creator of the site
that says a lot about your bad faith about it
we discover nullius have many alt account for trolling
and for this reason
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--5293050
he lost death_wish account
oh, if we dig MORE we found MORE shit..
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--5293050
I dedicate myself above all to the local board Italy
I don't normally visit the international sections
but it was lucky for me that you tagged me, @nullius
thank you
it's a good opportunity to clean up
still continue in your meaningless actions (for a 2019 posts.... really)
no one forbids you
but when you throw a stone into a pond, it causes changes
honestly if I have to live in a context where any bona fide action has to be blamed by black hats (you don't even know what black hats are apparently, because you are ignorant) then we should live in a constant "witch hunt" tension
do you want this climate in the forum? I do not
I did not expect such behavior from you, for months you have been throwing random red tags, history says so
you are so nervous that you have tagged me for no reason and then as a hypocrite you accuse me of giving red trust at random
bravo!
https://archive.ph/96yDW
another symptom that you are sick
Giving merits to a banned account is not normal
you still have time to take the pills
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=159476;page=trusted&dt
the funny thing is that you gave red to fillippone but not to the creator of the site
that says a lot about your bad faith about it
we discover nullius have many alt account for trolling
and for this reason
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--5293050
he lost death_wish account
oh, if we dig MORE we found MORE shit..
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--5293050
I dedicate myself above all to the local board Italy
I don't normally visit the international sections
but it was lucky for me that you tagged me, @nullius
thank you
it's a good opportunity to clean up
August 03, 2022, 02:00:46 AM
...
@fillippone, in addition to being a wannabe wallet thief, you are a coward.
...
@fillippone, in addition to being a wannabe wallet thief, you are a coward.
...
@nullius, how about starting a thread in Scam Accusations instead of hijacking this thread?
0. I have no time for this drama. Why would I want to create a new thread about it?
1. This is not “hijacking”. Here in the Development & Technical Discussion forum, it is customary to call it out when someone is seeking to steal money while pretending to do otherwise: Brainwallet promoters, LBC (which fillippone praised in OP here), etc. The development forum moderators sometimes speak up about that themselves. As fillippone may not know because he’s not a development-forum regular, there have been massive flamewars here over LBC—sometimes involving one of the moderators; I was tangentially involved with that years ago, via an argument with an LBC shill who also ridiculously claimed that he had found real money by clicking around on one of these “list all bitcoin keys” sites. (Not keys-dot-lol; a different one.)
By the by, odolvlobo, you have been around for awhile: What happened to the Bitcoin community whitehats who used to search for keys, for the purpose of securing and returning the money of people with vulnerable wallets? That is the exact opposite of what fillippone announced in OP he wishes to do. (That he is laughably incompetent about it is beside the point: The question here is one of intent.)
But since you want a technical discussion, odolvlobo, I should point out (as I noted earlier) that OP here is inaccurate and misleading in its characterization of Bitcoin’s security.
How I wound up here: In the Wall Observer, I posted the following. As you are aware, odolvlobo, I am entirely correct:
[WO] Perennially popular misinformation about Bitcoin keys.
Nobody who has even the slightest knowledge of cryptography will ever attempt to guess a Bitcoin private key that way.
For an P2PKH or P2WPKH address where the public key has not been revealed, the search space is 2160; and there are approximately slightly fewer than 296 valid keys per address.
If the public key is known, it has a notional 2128 security level.
An attacker would not try to guess the key by bruteforce. Rather than bruteforce, an attacker would use something like this free, open-source program:
And even if someone wanted to try bruteforce for some ridiculous unreason, there are about 2256 - 2128.3457 valid private keys, not exactly 2256 keys. That is a negligible difference; but if one wishes to count keys, count the keys properly!
Technical information must be accurate. The good cause of teaching the public about Bitcoin’s security is not helped by misleading explanations and misinformation.
fillippone replied to that (archive) in a manner that seemed to suggest he was arguing with my correct technical information about Bitcoin’s security level, and trying to teach me about the existence of sites that list all Bitcoin keys. He directed me here. At first, I just rolled my eyes—well, okay, I have helped to teach plenty of people how this Bitcoin thing actually works. But then, my jaw hit the floor when I clicked through here and saw that he claimed it would be “legitimate” to take any money he could hypothetically find this way.
He is acting as if money is just floating around in cypherspace, there for the taking if only he can somehow find it—dreaming of anonymously snatching someone’s life savings, without giving a damn if that’s what it is—and nobody pointed this out. WTF!? 😾
Archive: https://archive.ph/5yeFn#selection-4285.0-4423.139
@babo, (page 2 and now page 3) beneath response save to note that your tactic of accusing the accuser shows your own dishonourable character. Defending expressly stated, openly proclaimed wallet-thief intentions by wild insults and personal attacks on the one who properly pointed out the obvious: Tagged accordingly.
dear child, you are sick
how much are the trusts of a person who randomly throws them around
without any motivation
do not worry, I will act accordingly and not only will I tag you, I will open a flag, because a toxic person like you damages the community
That is quite clearly a retaliatory abuse of the trust system. And unlike tags, which are entirely discretionary and unmoderated, flags have objective criteria that must be met. For a Type-1 flag, the criterion is that anyone dealing with a user must be “at a high risk of losing money”, according to a determination “based on concrete red flags which any knowledgeable & reasonable forum user should agree with, and it is not based on the user's opinions.”
For the record, to prevent any possible accusation of retaliatory escalation, I was already considering a Type-1 flag on fillippone. I did not (yet?) raise one, mostly because seriously: I have no time for this nonsense. Claiming that it is “legitimate” to take money (hypothetically) found by searching for other people’s private keys is indubitably a “concrete red flag which any knowledgeable & reasonable forum user should agree with”, indicating “a high risk of losing money” in dealing with a person of such character.
August 03, 2022, 01:38:50 AM
@babo, (page 2 and now page 3) beneath response save to note that your tactic of accusing the accuser shows your own dishonourable character. Defending expressly stated, openly proclaimed wallet-thief intentions by wild insults and personal attacks on the one who properly pointed out the obvious: Tagged accordingly.
dear child, you are sick
how much are the trusts of a person who randomly throws them around
without any motivation
do not worry, I will act accordingly and not only will I tag you, I will open a flag, because a toxic person like you damages the community
August 03, 2022, 12:59:04 AM
...
@fillippone, in addition to being a wannabe wallet thief, you are a coward.
...
@fillippone, in addition to being a wannabe wallet thief, you are a coward.
...
@nullius, how about starting a thread in Scam Accusations instead of hijacking this thread?
August 02, 2022, 05:21:58 PM
It is bad enough that I needed to point out the nature of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Worse that others are wasting my time arguing about the obvious.
@fillippone, in addition to being a wannabe wallet thief, you are a coward. You are obviously quite well aware of this thread. Hiding behind others, as your friend babo maliciously tries to turn this into an attack on me: Despicable. Perhaps because there is nothing you could say here.
@LoyceV (via LoyceMobile) (bottom of page 2), you wholly evaded the substance of the matter. But the next time that some anonymous “Newbie” account pops up in the development forum to seek help with Brainflayer or a key-cracker, I will be happy to let him know that LoyceV says he’s just showing that Bitcoin is secure. Do you even realize that you yourself are propounding a popular blackhat argument?
As I remarked in my first post on this thread, this is well beyond Asch. It is group conformity, plus people reflexively defending someone who is popular. If the author’s name on OP were not “fillippone”, and if fillippone were not exceptionally popular, then everyone would immediately see that he is a wallet thief (or wants to be). Imagine that an anonymous Newbie account very explicitly said that he is trying to get lucky finding and taking other people’s coins, he favourably cited LBC (a wallet-thief project whose author has been red-tagged for years), and he claimed this is “legitimate”. Classic wallet thief. Open-and-shut case.
Taking fillippone’s argument in OP to its logical conclusion, there is no such thing as a Bitcoin theft: If you have the private keys, the money is legitimately yours, period. Chew on that for a bit.
Whereas a popular and highly-trusted pillar of the community has increased responsibility. I will not grant fillippone deference for being “fillippone”: To the contrary, I will hold him to a higher standard than I would apply to some dumb random newbie.
@babo, (page 2 and now page 3) beneath response save to note that your tactic of accusing the accuser shows your own dishonourable character. Defending expressly stated, openly proclaimed wallet-thief intentions by wild insults and personal attacks on the one who properly pointed out the obvious: Tagged accordingly.
@ETFbitcoin, few people have considered the abstract question of Bitcoin ownership in cogent and coherent terms. I am well on record as characterizing Bitcoin as a bearer asset; please see quotes below (including my disagreement with some Bitcoin Core developers, whom I believe abrogated the concept of Bitcoin as a bearer asset in some development discussions about signmessage). Insofar as I have seen, I seem to be the only person in the world who has really thought this through. I should write about that further, if I were not wasting my time pointing out the obvious here.
Consider physical gold coins as an analogy, and take fillippone’s name out of the picture. Imagine that it were still a popular practice to hide (crypto- < κρυπτός, ‘hidden’) gold coins under one’s mattress. “Account X” said that he wants to find a way to peek under people’s mattresses, and to discover where they hid their gold coins. He claimed that if he finds where people hid their gold coins, it is “legitimate” for him to take them.
With physical gold coins, possession rules: A theft cannot simply be frozen or revoked, like a bank or credit card transaction. Instead of not your keys, not your coins, the situation is literally not your coins, not your coins. That is obvious. However, we would all recognize a theft as a theft.
See also Gregory Maxwell’s condemnation of LBC:
It profiteth us not to apply a—well, let us say, a “creative” interpretation of the word “legitimate”. The word descends from L. legitimus, ‘lawful’, < lex, ‘law’; and it has stayed close to its original meaning. In English, it can mean ‘lawful, legal’, or in a non-legal sense, ‘in accord with principles and customs’, among other senses not relevant here. It is a cognate with Italian legittimo, which is a synonym in Italian with legale, valido, regolare, permesso, concesso, consentito, accettato, approvato, autorizzato. Thus, fillippone cannot reasonably claim to have made a mistake of foreign language: In his own mother tongue, he claimed that for him to take any coins he could hypothetically find is legale, valido, regolare, permesso, concesso, consentito, accettato, approvato, autorizzato—and @babo is backing him up on this!
@aliashraf, partly agreed and partly disagreed. Technologists do generally have a tendency to think of technologies in isolation, without considering philosophical, legal, and social aspects. Please see my discussion above and below about Bitcoin’s nature as a bearer instrument. However, I also disagree with your characterization of Bitcoin and especially, with your deprecation of cryptography.
Aside...
I have known for the past nine years that zero-knowledge proofs will take over the world. For nine years, I have yearned to get zero-knowledge proofs into Bitcoin. Satoshi himself knew that zero-knowledge proofs could improve Bitcoin; he simply didn’t know how to imply them here, and the breakthrough cryptographic advances didn’t happen until 2013–2014. I was an early adopter, and suffered some bleeding-edge problems around 2017–2018; only in 2022, after many further advances, I am ready to declare the technology mature for general adoption and usage. I have been making many preparations; and some of my forthcoming posts will be exactly on that topic. That, which is of world-moving importance, is being delayed and having my time stolen away by this, which is a spectacular failure of community responsibility.
@JayJuanGee, although your response is more level-headed than some others here, this is not a case of “shoot first and ask questions later”. It is an open-and-shut case: fillippone openly, blatantly proclaimed the intentions of a thief. This is not even a technical argument, or a n00b “whoopsie”: It is a matter of basic ethics and honesty of character.
It seems that almost everyone responding on this thread would side with rico666, the author of that LBC project that fillippone praised in OP here:
Yeah. I had lot's of these discussions. Your comparison doesn't apply - even remotely.
"I started taking walks in the park - systematically taking paths to cover the whole area. From time to time I find some coins. What am I supposed to do, leave them there?"
The doors in the neighborhood have names on them. And yes, even "for finds in the park" rules apply. We adhere to them.
You are lucky, this night the pool found something again. The funds are still on the address. What would be your take on this now?
It's a rhetoric question, I do not really need your input. As promised I slept over our - for me yesterdays - "conversation". I guess I'll leave the lawyers in their box this time. Instead, when we meet at the next Bitcoin event we'll both be attending, I'll approach you and we'll handle our arguments like real men. Promise.
Rico
Whereas even rico666 does not go so far as fillippone: rico666 expressly claimed that he does not intend to take away people’s money, whereas fillippone claimed that it would be “legitimate” to steal people’s money for himself (!). If rico666 was widely tagged as a wallet thief (and he used to have a lot more tags for this than I see now), this is indeed an open-and-shut case. It is ridiculous that anyone is even arguing with me.
As I have repeatedly mentioned, everything that fillippone claimed in OP was “legitimate” applies equally to malicious use of Brainflayer (which works!), or to “key-cracking” tools (which don’t work, but I am speaking to the principle of the matter).
Nullius on Bitcoin as a Bearer Asset
Following is a brief abstract of my prior statement on Bitcoin’s nature as a bearer instrument. I think that with physical bearer instruments, it would be too obvious to state that a bearer instrument can be stolen.
N.b. that “nine-tenths” is not “ten-tenths”, and that should not be read out of context. If possession equalled ownership in all aspects, then the whole concept of theft would not exist: It would be impossible to steal anything, because anything that you possess is legitimately yours.
That is a classic “law of the jungle” argument. The “law of the jungle” is what fillippone explicitly proclaimed in OP here: Find money, take it, it is “legitimately” yours.
As a Nietzschean amoralist, I am well aware that all morality is subjective; and I can philosophically contemplate the “law of the jungle” argument, or (mutatis mutandis) various justifications of a Thieves’ Code, without jerking my knee or overly exciting my glands. However, thievery is incompatible with me and with any society in which I wish to partake. Accordingly, my morality brands thieves as thieves and criminals; and on the Bitcoin Forum, I tag them accordingly.
Edit: Reviewing the above quotes, I realize that fillippone’s statements in OP are logically equivalent to extending the “not your keys, not your coins” rule to mean that a centralized exchange has a right to exit-scam users, simply by walking off with the coins. I don’t think that that’s what any reasonable person means by “not your keys, not your coins”.
(End of edit.)
The above responses are compressed and not so neatly formatted as usual; for this is suddenly becoming an absurd waste of my time, and a distraction from important tasks. I should start hourly billing of anyone who expects for me to explain the obvious yet again.
@fillippone, in addition to being a wannabe wallet thief, you are a coward. You are obviously quite well aware of this thread. Hiding behind others, as your friend babo maliciously tries to turn this into an attack on me: Despicable. Perhaps because there is nothing you could say here.
@LoyceV (via LoyceMobile) (bottom of page 2), you wholly evaded the substance of the matter. But the next time that some anonymous “Newbie” account pops up in the development forum to seek help with Brainflayer or a key-cracker, I will be happy to let him know that LoyceV says he’s just showing that Bitcoin is secure. Do you even realize that you yourself are propounding a popular blackhat argument?
As I remarked in my first post on this thread, this is well beyond Asch. It is group conformity, plus people reflexively defending someone who is popular. If the author’s name on OP were not “fillippone”, and if fillippone were not exceptionally popular, then everyone would immediately see that he is a wallet thief (or wants to be
). Imagine that an anonymous Newbie account very explicitly said that he is trying to get lucky finding and taking other people’s coins, he favourably cited LBC (a wallet-thief project whose author has been red-tagged for years), and he claimed this is “legitimate”. Classic wallet thief. Open-and-shut case.Taking fillippone’s argument in OP to its logical conclusion, there is no such thing as a Bitcoin theft: If you have the private keys, the money is legitimately yours, period. Chew on that for a bit.
Whereas a popular and highly-trusted pillar of the community has increased responsibility. I will not grant fillippone deference for being “fillippone”: To the contrary, I will hold him to a higher standard than I would apply to some dumb random newbie.
@babo, (page 2 and now page 3) beneath response save to note that your tactic of accusing the accuser shows your own dishonourable character. Defending expressly stated, openly proclaimed wallet-thief intentions by wild insults and personal attacks on the one who properly pointed out the obvious: Tagged accordingly.
@ETFbitcoin, few people have considered the abstract question of Bitcoin ownership in cogent and coherent terms. I am well on record as characterizing Bitcoin as a bearer asset; please see quotes below (including my disagreement with some Bitcoin Core developers, whom I believe abrogated the concept of Bitcoin as a bearer asset in some development discussions about signmessage). Insofar as I have seen, I seem to be the only person in the world who has really thought this through. I should write about that further, if I were not wasting my time pointing out the obvious here.
Consider physical gold coins as an analogy, and take fillippone’s name out of the picture. Imagine that it were still a popular practice to hide (crypto- < κρυπτός, ‘hidden’) gold coins under one’s mattress. “Account X” said that he wants to find a way to peek under people’s mattresses, and to discover where they hid their gold coins. He claimed that if he finds where people hid their gold coins, it is “legitimate” for him to take them.
With physical gold coins, possession rules: A theft cannot simply be frozen or revoked, like a bank or credit card transaction. Instead of not your keys, not your coins, the situation is literally not your coins, not your coins. That is obvious. However, we would all recognize a theft as a theft.
See also Gregory Maxwell’s condemnation of LBC:
"I started making keys, starting with ones with fewest cuts and systematically working through all possibilities. To learn if these keys matched any that had been used in the past, I tried each one in every door in the neighborhood. After a bit I found a few valuables. What was I supposed to do, leave them there?"
It profiteth us not to apply a—well, let us say, a “creative” interpretation of the word “legitimate”. The word descends from L. legitimus, ‘lawful’, < lex, ‘law’; and it has stayed close to its original meaning. In English, it can mean ‘lawful, legal’, or in a non-legal sense, ‘in accord with principles and customs’, among other senses not relevant here. It is a cognate with Italian legittimo, which is a synonym in Italian with legale, valido, regolare, permesso, concesso, consentito, accettato, approvato, autorizzato. Thus, fillippone cannot reasonably claim to have made a mistake of foreign language: In his own mother tongue, he claimed that for him to take any coins he could hypothetically find is legale, valido, regolare, permesso, concesso, consentito, accettato, approvato, autorizzato—and @babo is backing him up on this!
@aliashraf, partly agreed and partly disagreed. Technologists do generally have a tendency to think of technologies in isolation, without considering philosophical, legal, and social aspects. Please see my discussion above and below about Bitcoin’s nature as a bearer instrument. However, I also disagree with your characterization of Bitcoin and especially, with your deprecation of cryptography.
Aside...
or how trending is zk proof fantasies which are supposed to be the next BIG thing (total madness),
I have known for the past nine years that zero-knowledge proofs will take over the world. For nine years, I have yearned to get zero-knowledge proofs into Bitcoin. Satoshi himself knew that zero-knowledge proofs could improve Bitcoin; he simply didn’t know how to imply them here, and the breakthrough cryptographic advances didn’t happen until 2013–2014. I was an early adopter, and suffered some bleeding-edge problems around 2017–2018; only in 2022, after many further advances, I am ready to declare the technology mature for general adoption and usage. I have been making many preparations; and some of my forthcoming posts will be exactly on that topic. That, which is of world-moving importance, is being delayed and having my time stolen away by this, which is a spectacular failure of community responsibility.
@JayJuanGee, although your response is more level-headed than some others here, this is not a case of “shoot first and ask questions later”. It is an open-and-shut case: fillippone openly, blatantly proclaimed the intentions of a thief. This is not even a technical argument, or a n00b “whoopsie”: It is a matter of basic ethics and honesty of character.
It seems that almost everyone responding on this thread would side with rico666, the author of that LBC project that fillippone praised in OP here:
"I started making keys, starting with ones with fewest cuts and systematically working through all possibilities. To learn if these keys matched any that had been used in the past, I tried each one in every door in the neighborhood. After a bit I found a few valuables. What was I supposed to do, leave them there?"
Yeah. I had lot's of these discussions. Your comparison doesn't apply - even remotely.
"I started taking walks in the park - systematically taking paths to cover the whole area. From time to time I find some coins. What am I supposed to do, leave them there?"
The doors in the neighborhood have names on them. And yes, even "for finds in the park" rules apply. We adhere to them.
You are lucky, this night the pool found something again. The funds are still on the address. What would be your take on this now?
It's a rhetoric question, I do not really need your input. As promised I slept over our - for me yesterdays - "conversation". I guess I'll leave the lawyers in their box this time. Instead, when we meet at the next Bitcoin event we'll both be attending, I'll approach you and we'll handle our arguments like real men. Promise.
Rico
Whereas even rico666 does not go so far as fillippone: rico666 expressly claimed that he does not intend to take away people’s money, whereas fillippone claimed that it would be “legitimate” to steal people’s money for himself (!). If rico666 was widely tagged as a wallet thief (and he used to have a lot more tags for this than I see now), this is indeed an open-and-shut case. It is ridiculous that anyone is even arguing with me.
As I have repeatedly mentioned, everything that fillippone claimed in OP was “legitimate” applies equally to malicious use of Brainflayer (which works!), or to “key-cracking” tools (which don’t work, but I am speaking to the principle of the matter).
Nullius on Bitcoin as a Bearer Asset
Following is a brief abstract of my prior statement on Bitcoin’s nature as a bearer instrument. I think that with physical bearer instruments, it would be too obvious to state that a bearer instrument can be stolen.
- Nullius. “Stake addresses, signmessage, ownership, and control.” Bitcoin Forum post. 2020-01-19.I respectfully disagree with sipa, luke-jr, and others so stating (and I should probably say so on that issue). I argue strictly that control of the private keys equals title to the Bitcoin, period; and it is dangerous to blur a rule logically inherent in the nature decentralized, trustless, permissionless cryptographic money.
If you are a custodial exchange, etc., then you may be holding title to that Bitcoin as a nominee, or (quite arguably) a bailee, or some other legal concept which may be logical to apply. However, account-holders at custodial exchanges are not the titular owners of any Bitcoin at all, in my opinion. If you don’t have the private keys, then it is not your Bitcoin: It is somebody else’s Bitcoin; and that somebody else, the titular owner of the Bitcoin, has contractually agreed to let you excercise beneficial ownership of some sort.
So many ills of this world result when ownership is divorced from control. (Aside, don’t get me started on how the separation of ownership, control, and responsibility is a major factor in the widespread corruption of modern corporations.) Don’t do that with Bitcoin.
In my analysis, ownership is fully congruent with the use of digital signatures to control money in a decentralized, trustless, permissionless system; and legal agreements outside the four corners of Bitcoin script are properly compartmented where they belong, in the realm of legal contracts and the legal enforcement thereof.
(N.b. that the same argument applies to theft: A thief who uses wrongful means to obtain title is still holding titular ownership, and will continue to do so unless recovery is effectuated by avoiding the improperly obtained title. By analogy, consider a criminal who uses forgery, coercion, or fraud in the factum to wrongfully obtain a deed to lands—although that deed would probably be adjudged absolutely void, not merely voidable, whereas a Bitcoin transaction is only absolutely void if a blockchain reorg retroactively invalidates it.) - Nullius. “[WO] Bitcoin is a bearer asset!” Bitcoin Forum post. 2020-11-17.Bitcoin is a bearer asset. It is a bearer asset by the nature of its design. [...]
All “KYC/AML” nonsense, including the tracking of the source and destination of funds, attempts to change Bitcoin from a bearer asset into an identity-based asset.
The only way to achieve that is to universally enforce “KYC” via miner blacklisting and transaction censorship, and to make some way to rollback transactions (in the manner of an “irregular state change”) which, to my knowledge, has not been seriously proposed for Bitcoin. - Nullius. “Judge concurs with nullius: Keys = titular ownership (vs. beneficial ownership)”. Bitcoin Forum post. 2020-11-25.I take the position that Bitcoin is a bearer asset. [...]
Bearer assets such as cash, gold bullion, or old-fashioned bearer bonds can be held in trust for the benefit (“beneficial ownership”) of another. This neither changes the nature of the bearer asset, nor absolves the trustee of legally enforceable fiduciary duties to the beneficiary. Much as I can tell from the above snippet, the judge in this case seems to have imposed a constructive trust on the coins.
The word “beneficial” is key here! A beneficial owner is not necessarily the titular owner. [...]
Much though I am sympathetic to this statement in principle, there will always be tension between the desires of those who would govern, and the practical limitations on their power. Bitcoin directly exploits this tension. In an era when governments and their owners, the banks have been attempting to replace all bearer assets with identity-based assets, Bitcoin’s nature as a bearer asset pushes us back toward the wiser, freer era of bullion, cash notes, and bearer bonds—with the added benefit that Bitcoin can be transferred around the world with the press of a button.
For better or for worse, courts will attempt to adjudicate disputes over the allegedly proper ownership of bearer assets. As you say, it comes down to a question of enforceability.
Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Always has been, always will be! Possession of the keys equals possession of the coins. Bearer asset.
N.b. that “nine-tenths” is not “ten-tenths”, and that should not be read out of context. If possession equalled ownership in all aspects, then the whole concept of theft would not exist: It would be impossible to steal anything, because anything that you possess is legitimately yours.
That is a classic “law of the jungle” argument. The “law of the jungle” is what fillippone explicitly proclaimed in OP here: Find money, take it, it is “legitimately” yours.
As a Nietzschean amoralist, I am well aware that all morality is subjective; and I can philosophically contemplate the “law of the jungle” argument, or (mutatis mutandis) various justifications of a Thieves’ Code, without jerking my knee or overly exciting my glands. However, thievery is incompatible with me and with any society in which I wish to partake. Accordingly, my morality brands thieves as thieves and criminals; and on the Bitcoin Forum, I tag them accordingly.
Edit: Reviewing the above quotes, I realize that fillippone’s statements in OP are logically equivalent to extending the “not your keys, not your coins” rule to mean that a centralized exchange has a right to exit-scam users, simply by walking off with the coins. I don’t think that that’s what any reasonable person means by “not your keys, not your coins”.
[...] you are actually owner of the private keys, so you are legitimate owner of such balance, and nothing prevents you from transferring to your own wallet.
(End of edit.)
The above responses are compressed and not so neatly formatted as usual; for this is suddenly becoming an absurd waste of my time, and a distraction from important tasks. I should start hourly billing of anyone who expects for me to explain the obvious yet again.
August 02, 2022, 02:29:37 PM
Question: Do you, babo, believe that if you had a script that could find people’s private keys, it would be quote-unquote “legitimate” to transfer their bitcoins to your wallet?
The general futility of such an exercise is irrelevant: What matters here is the intent.
See the topic title: the intent is to show how secure Bitcoin is. That's why I Merited the post.The general futility of such an exercise is irrelevant: What matters here is the intent.
If I had a script to find people's private keys, Bitcoin would be worthless. I'm glad I can just tell people to try and find a funded private key, so they can prove to themselves that it won't work.
Your summary (Loyce) does seem to fall in line with my assessment too - even though I have been a bit technically baffled about what is going on and the extent to which there might be malicious intentions regarding actually finding security vulnerabilities (and thus funds from wallets with bad security).
Of course, red tags can be given at the discretion of the sender, and surely if they somewhat justify their red tag with the support of evidence (and even somewhat logical explanations), then the sender of the red tag is less likely to receive counter-balancing or retaliatory red tags from that member or from other forum members - and maybe in this case, nullius is getting too worked up about his own self-righteous attribution of mal-intent to shoot first and ask questions later, when maybe he should have at least allowed some response or be willing to downgrade such red tag to neutral - potentially if warranted.
Sure each of us likely have some evil within us and even motivated by self-interest, and bitcoin seems to be designed to grow stronger from such motivations of self-interests - even though surely, each of us are free to beat upon others if we believe that they have loosey-goosie morals... and personally, it seems that I spend a lot of time nit-picking members about some of their language in regards to naysaying bitcoin or supporting seemingly scammy projects that are tangential to bitcoin (aka shitcoins or some other questionable projects), even with all of that, I am having difficulties attributing mal-intent to fillippone based on the way that he has so far discussed this topic of showing, finding and/or potentially exploiting security vulnerabilities, if they were to be able to be discovered..... and surely, it could even be possible that he could consider conceding to nullius in some ways (maybe?) if there might have been some ways in which fillippone might conclude that some of his language might have been misunderstood, misleading and/or even describing malintentions that he had not meant to promote.
To the extent that I even understand the criticisms against fillippone, I am not even conceding that fillippone had gone too far in the whole context of his attempt to present this matter - so in that regard, I am not sure whether changing language - or even putting in a disclaimer within OP or some subsequent post(s) would be necessary given the context in which it had seemed that fillippone was attempting to bring up this topic in terms of pointing out various existing or possible bitcoin wallet vulnerabilities.
Of course, another matter is the discouraging of members of posting potentially controversial material by red-trusting them, and I am pretty well aware that fillippone must put quite a bit of efforts into his various posts, and sure sometimes I find that he gets things wrong and there are all kinds of members, including fillippone, in which sometimes I do not agree with what seems to be their intentions, and even with all of that said, I am having troubles appreciating how fillippones actions in this case rise to the level of warranting red trust in the various ways that nullius has attributed such bad intentions to fillippone, even though I do agree that lack of success in breaking into wallets would not necessarily make the aims less morally repugnant in the event that fillippone did have such malintentions... but still it seems to me that nullius is attributing way more malice to fillippones set of actions than they deserve to the extent that malice can be considered a gradient rather than an absolute.
August 02, 2022, 12:04:16 PM
Wait a minute. For the past three years, nobody noticed that fillippone is a wannabe wallet thief? This is way beyond Asch.
fillippone will never find anything unless someone tells him about Brainflayer, but that is not the point: He is audaciously proclaiming wallet-thief intentions that rico666 evasively dissimulated with LBC. rico666 got tagged for that. Worse, fillippone claims that this is “legitimate” (!). And he claims that as a trusted pillar of the community, who should be responsible to the highest standards. Tagged accordingly.
fillippone will never find anything unless someone tells him about Brainflayer, but that is not the point: He is audaciously proclaiming wallet-thief intentions that rico666 evasively dissimulated with LBC. rico666 got tagged for that. Worse, fillippone claims that this is “legitimate” (!). And he claims that as a trusted pillar of the community, who should be responsible to the highest standards. Tagged accordingly.
Doesn't it depend on how you interpret meaning of word "legitimate"? Based on how @fillippone use that word on sentence, i interpret that as Bitcoin ownership based on knowing it's private key.
Quote from: https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/legitimate
2. adjective based on known statements or events or conditions
synonyms: logical
valid
well grounded in logic or truth or having legal force
synonyms: logical
valid
well grounded in logic or truth or having legal force
Factually speaking, the elite/gov dominated field of cryptography and its artificial terminology is not hailed in the bitcoin white paper as something of critical or distinguished importance, there was nothing new or disruptive about electronic signatures. The term "crypto" appears just once in the body of the paper, think about it, only one occurence of "crypto"!
Don't take these mathemagicians too seriously, they are full of sh*t.
BTW, Who in the hell made it up in the first place,
August 02, 2022, 07:41:21 AM
Wait a minute. For the past three years, nobody noticed that fillippone is a wannabe wallet thief? This is way beyond Asch.
fillippone will never find anything unless someone tells him about Brainflayer, but that is not the point: He is audaciously proclaiming wallet-thief intentions that rico666 evasively dissimulated with LBC. rico666 got tagged for that. Worse, fillippone claims that this is “legitimate” (!). And he claims that as a trusted pillar of the community, who should be responsible to the highest standards. Tagged accordingly.
fillippone will never find anything unless someone tells him about Brainflayer, but that is not the point: He is audaciously proclaiming wallet-thief intentions that rico666 evasively dissimulated with LBC. rico666 got tagged for that. Worse, fillippone claims that this is “legitimate” (!). And he claims that as a trusted pillar of the community, who should be responsible to the highest standards. Tagged accordingly.
Doesn't it depend on how you interpret meaning of word "legitimate"? Based on how @fillippone use that word on sentence, i interpret that as Bitcoin ownership based on knowing it's private key.
Quote from: https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/legitimate
2. adjective based on known statements or events or conditions
synonyms: logical
valid
well grounded in logic or truth or having legal force
synonyms: logical
valid
well grounded in logic or truth or having legal force
August 02, 2022, 06:57:26 AM
Question: Do you, babo, believe that if you had a script that could find people’s private keys, it would be quote-unquote “legitimate” to transfer their bitcoins to your wallet?
The general futility of such an exercise is irrelevant: What matters here is the intent. The LBC author duplicitously denies having such an intent as quoted in my prior post; nonetheless, he been tagged for years as a wallet thief. Anyway, the same would apply to malicious use of Brainflayer; and anyway, fillippone explicitly suggested finding weak keys from buggy wallets.
(Please focus on the above-stated question. Your nonsense is beneath reply—save to remark that it is inadvisable to insult me, and about as futile as attempting to crack securely created Bitcoin keys.)
The general futility of such an exercise is irrelevant: What matters here is the intent. The LBC author duplicitously denies having such an intent as quoted in my prior post; nonetheless, he been tagged for years as a wallet thief. Anyway, the same would apply to malicious use of Brainflayer; and anyway, fillippone explicitly suggested finding weak keys from buggy wallets.
(Please focus on the above-stated question. Your nonsense is beneath reply—save to remark that it is inadvisable to insult me, and about as futile as attempting to crack securely created Bitcoin keys.)
I can't insult you, nature has already done this for me
the uselessness of your accusations and your post are there for all to see
I certainly don't have to tell others what to do or what to think about
if you are serious, then I make the right decisions about you
people like you do not bring benefits to the forum or to the people who attend it, as shown by your latest red trusts taken
August 02, 2022, 06:54:26 AM
Question: Do you, babo, believe that if you had a script that could find people’s private keys, it would be quote-unquote “legitimate” to transfer their bitcoins to your wallet?
The general futility of such an exercise is irrelevant: What matters here is the intent.
See the topic title: the intent is to show how secure Bitcoin is. That's why I Merited the post.The general futility of such an exercise is irrelevant: What matters here is the intent.
If I had a script to find people's private keys, Bitcoin would be worthless. I'm glad I can just tell people to try and find a funded private key, so they can prove to themselves that it won't work.
August 02, 2022, 05:48:11 AM
[Will not repeat for the benefit of those who evidently have difficulty reading.]
I'm here because there is a
I don't know if you drank or didn't take your pills
but to allege that a person is a blackhats because he uses such sites is at least imaginative not to say bad taste
maybe you are joking, or maybe you are not kidding, please explain what you mean because I want to know if it's a game or if you are serious
Code:
@babo
who triggered meI don't know if you drank or didn't take your pills
but to allege that a person is a blackhats because he uses such sites is at least imaginative not to say bad taste
maybe you are joking, or maybe you are not kidding, please explain what you mean because I want to know if it's a game or if you are serious
Question: Do you, babo, believe that if you had a script that could find people’s private keys, it would be quote-unquote “legitimate” to transfer their bitcoins to your wallet?
The general futility of such an exercise is irrelevant: What matters here is the intent. The LBC author duplicitously denies having such an intent as quoted in my prior post; nonetheless, he been tagged for years as a wallet thief. Anyway, the same would apply to malicious use of Brainflayer; and anyway, fillippone explicitly suggested finding weak keys from buggy wallets.
(Please focus on the above-stated question. Your nonsense is beneath reply—save to remark that it is inadvisable to insult me, and about as futile as attempting to crack securely created Bitcoin keys.)
August 02, 2022, 03:14:42 AM
I'm here because there is a
I don't know if you drank or didn't take your pills
but to allege that a person is a blackhats because he uses such sites is at least imaginative not to say bad taste
maybe you are joking, or maybe you are not kidding, please explain what you mean because I want to know if it's a game or if you are serious
Code:
@babo
who triggered meI don't know if you drank or didn't take your pills
but to allege that a person is a blackhats because he uses such sites is at least imaginative not to say bad taste
maybe you are joking, or maybe you are not kidding, please explain what you mean because I want to know if it's a game or if you are serious
August 01, 2022, 12:39:13 PM
So, this thread contains some substantial inaccuracies—some of which were corrected by a Newbie account that has not posted since 2020. (Thanks, Elliptic23; please come back. Anyway, merit sent.) Beyond that...
Wait a minute. For the past three years, nobody noticed that fillippone is a wannabe wallet thief? This is way beyond Asch.
fillippone will never find anything unless someone tells him about Brainflayer, but that is not the point: He is audaciously proclaiming wallet-thief intentions that rico666 evasively dissimulated with LBC. rico666 got tagged for that. Worse, fillippone claims that this is “legitimate” (!). And he claims that as a trusted pillar of the community, who should be responsible to the highest standards. Tagged accordingly.
This isn’t a matter of learning about Bitcoin: To dream of snatching people’s life savings or business funding, and treat it as a lottery winning or money found lying in the street, it is a matter of base character and lack of decency. At least, an honest blackhat admits a desire to take away other people’s money. By comparison, I wouldn’t criticize such candid malevolence too much—and why would I bother, when there is this:
"If you had a computer that could do those calculations within a human's lifetime and were the size of the earth or smaller, and you actually somehow had an energy source to power it, as soon as you'd turn it on, you'd turn the earth into a supernova."
More detailed explanation in a more technical thread about it:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/energy-requirements-to-brute-force-sha-256-5216788
I've never liked that image because its misleading.
We already know of ways to crack private keys that dont require 2^256 work.
That image always annoyed me, too. If the public key is known, it has a notional 2128 security level.
I'm trying to understand it but failed. Why not 2^256? They are hashes right? Like strings. All possible combinations. Where is the mistake? ???
They are not hashes. Public keys are X,Y points on a very large curve which has just under 2^256 points.
Thank you. (I am not sure why everyone ignored this account. Because it’s a “Newbie” account?)
The generation is done server-side. I can’t see the pages, because it throws me a Javascript-requiring CAPTCHA that I refuse to comply with; and the code for the frontend website was apparently un-open-sourced. But I can see the code for the backend, which is rather embarrassing:
Wait a minute. For the past three years, nobody noticed that fillippone is a wannabe wallet thief? This is way beyond Asch.
fillippone will never find anything unless someone tells him about Brainflayer, but that is not the point: He is audaciously proclaiming wallet-thief intentions that rico666 evasively dissimulated with LBC. rico666 got tagged for that. Worse, fillippone claims that this is “legitimate” (!). And he claims that as a trusted pillar of the community, who should be responsible to the highest standards. Tagged accordingly.
This isn’t a matter of learning about Bitcoin: To dream of snatching people’s life savings or business funding, and treat it as a lottery winning or money found lying in the street, it is a matter of base character and lack of decency. At least, an honest blackhat admits a desire to take away other people’s money. By comparison, I wouldn’t criticize such candid malevolence too much—and why would I bother, when there is this:
How much energy would be necessary? Well, a lot, according to this infographic:
I was never truly happy with that picture, so your thread got me thinking how to explain the energy requirements in a different way:"If you had a computer that could do those calculations within a human's lifetime and were the size of the earth or smaller, and you actually somehow had an energy source to power it, as soon as you'd turn it on, you'd turn the earth into a supernova."
More detailed explanation in a more technical thread about it:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/energy-requirements-to-brute-force-sha-256-5216788
I've never liked that image because its misleading.
We already know of ways to crack private keys that dont require 2^256 work.
That image always annoyed me, too. If the public key is known, it has a notional 2128 security level.
p.s. a bit nitpick-y but there are 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFEBAAEDCE6AF48A03BBFD25E8CD0364140 private keys which is a little smaller than 2256 :P
I'm trying to understand it but failed. Why not 2^256? They are hashes right? Like strings. All possible combinations. Where is the mistake? ???
They are not hashes. Public keys are X,Y points on a very large curve which has just under 2^256 points.
Thank you. (I am not sure why everyone ignored this account. Because it’s a “Newbie” account?)
Yesterday while browsing down the Bitcoin rabbit hole I stumbled on the infamous keys.lol website
https://keys.lol
(Warning: time sink!)
Basically it’s a website that randomly generates 128 private keys on each page, then checks the balance of the related addresses (compressed and uncompressed) on the blockchain reporting eventual positive balances or past transactions.
Wow!
If you find a positive balance in this client side generated pages,
https://keys.lol
(Warning: time sink!)
Basically it’s a website that randomly generates 128 private keys on each page, then checks the balance of the related addresses (compressed and uncompressed) on the blockchain reporting eventual positive balances or past transactions.
Wow!
If you find a positive balance in this client side generated pages,
The generation is done server-side. I can’t see the pages, because it throws me a Javascript-requiring CAPTCHA that I refuse to comply with; and the code for the frontend website was apparently un-open-sourced. But I can see the code for the backend, which is rather embarrassing:
Yes, “straight up brute forcing” is indeed possible. I sincerely suggest that you try this. It will keep you busy and out of trouble. To make it easier, there is a public directory of all Bitcoin private keys. Yes, that site really does list all Bitcoin private keys. Get rich! Happy hunting!
(P.S., why are highly intelligent people in a “Development & Technical Discussion” forum seriously answering questions about bruteforcing secp256k1!? Doubly-hashed, undisclosed public keys are just gravy.)
(P.S., why are highly intelligent people in a “Development & Technical Discussion” forum seriously answering questions about bruteforcing secp256k1!? Doubly-hashed, undisclosed public keys are just gravy.)
I found the following amidst discussion of your very own clone of directory.io (!):
[...]
By the way, I see that you run LBC (and vehemently defend it). Have you seen rico666’s trust feedback? I wouldn’t trust anything executable from that guy on my machines. Just saying.
On a legit note, I was bored as shit sitting in this hotel room as I travel for work.
I found an address with exactly the miner fee by randomly searching http://btckey.space. I instantly ran down to the "news station" (What the UK calls a convenience store) and bought two scratch off lottery tickets, I didn't win, haha.
I found an address with exactly the miner fee by randomly searching http://btckey.space. I instantly ran down to the "news station" (What the UK calls a convenience store) and bought two scratch off lottery tickets, I didn't win, haha.
[...]
By the way, I see that you run LBC (and vehemently defend it). Have you seen rico666’s trust feedback? I wouldn’t trust anything executable from that guy on my machines. Just saying.
Bitcoin could easily upgrade to 512 Bit security.
If someday we "upgrade" bitcoin i don't think it would be to a bigger size curve (which the bigger keys come from) but i suppose it would be a migration to another different asymmetric cryptography algorithm instead of elliptic curve and keep it small at possibly the same 256 bit key size.
it's not like bigger size curves can just be plucked off a tree. so you probably right.
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