Topic: Who is the thief? - page 3. (Read 2521 times)

Except here it was not hypothetically hacked here. It's just that the original/rightful owner of those 10BTC used the private key 17 instead of a safe random key.  

In a real life problem similar to this one people wouldn't just distribute a private key or create, sign or broadcast a random transaction just because. They would do that to steal those coins and that would make them thieves. So OP should give us the hypothetical intentions of every user here to receive a proper answer.

Regardless I'd consider user C to be a thief if he doesn't return the coins after being told what happened and if the original owner proves that with a signed message or by other means. The other users would be thieves if they did all that with the intention to steal the coins.


Regarding this, it's not the same case. First you can't compare dust/1sat with real value like 10BTC. Also in this case the original owner was unaware of his funds being sent to user C. In your 1sat example it's clearly intentional because there are several transactions.

If someone receives 10BTC once against the will of the original owner then the only right thing to do is to return the coins (minus TX fees). If someone receives spam several times then of course he doesn't have to return it, he couldn't even cover the fees if he wanted to refund the coins.

then the only remaining possible thief is d, who is playing the most in this situation, and handled the private key and he still has it at the end, there is also the possibility that his sign is not authentic

When he did so knowing it could reasonably lead to the theft of valuable property from someone. It's like finding the key to someone's house, making copies and distributing them. That makes you culpable.

But it's just the number 17. When did distributing the number 17 become illegal or immoral?

So I think what you are saying is if you "find" a private key then thats OK, if you steal it then thats illegal. But then this gets even more tricky, what if you "found" the private key due to a bug, for example lets pretned there is some crappy wallet out there and every 1 millionth address it generates is the private key for the number 17. To me, if you found a bug and exploited it thats theft, but I'm not so sure it's theft if you simply decide to calculate the private keys for 1 to 17.

well but he did two things.)

1. found private key

2. distribute this to others

and simply point 2 is not so cool at all..

Person A didn't do anything wrong if he "found" that balance. It was his luck that he found it, and so that doesn't mean some kind of hack.
Don't know why your question relates me to one of the directories which revealed BTC private keys of lots of addresses.
Did you find anything?

Hacking is one thing, but publishing your results from your hacks is another, which might be illegal in some places.

Also, if Bitcoin is hypothetically hacked, then it's hypothetically done. I don't see the problem there.

About Person C, so you are saying that if someone sends you money, you have to send it back or you are a thief? what if someone continually sends you 1 satoshi every day and asks for it back? if you stop giving them back then according to you that would be theft, so could he get the courts and law enforcement involved? I don't think that refusing to return stolen funds that were sent to you is necessarily theft, especially if they were sent to you as part of some transaction which you provided goods/services to another party.

All B did is craft an unsigned Bitcoin transaction using publicly available information

And All D did was sign a Bitcoin transaction which he did not know was a fraudulent trasaction (I should have mentioned the only person who knows anything nefarious is happening is person A).

Well in my example the private key was predictable as you can see. We are assuming for whatever reason someone is storing their Bitcoins in this unsecure private key, lets pretend they purposely did this. To make it kind of easier to understand, instead of specifying the private key in hex, well specify it as an integer, so we'll pretend the private key was the number 17.

Person A has not commited any unauthorized access to any computer or "hacked" anything, he simply calculated the Bitcoin address for the private key 0, then 1, 2 etc until he reached 17 where he found a 10BTC balance. Has he done anything wrong? I don't think so, he hasn't tried to steal anything.

This is quite simple. The thieves are B and D. Also that would include person C if he does not send the stolen funds back by request.
All A did was hack it. Hacking =/= stealing.

No, it is not.
Read: hypothetical situation.

Simple. Noone.
You can brute force a key? Bitcoin is done.
Bitcoin being done, nothing of value has been stolen

well I have to read it couple of times:)

anyway from my point of view it is just person A. is ok to "hack something" or find weakness but he spread this information to other 2 person (B and D). It all starts with A so consequences go also behind A..

Random thought. Take this hypothetical situation:

Person A finds out via brute force that the private key 0xFFFF FFFF FFFF 1111 contains 10BTC and tells person B the Bitcoin address and person D the private key
Person B crafts a Bitcoin transaction that sends the 10BTC to Person C and gives that transaction to person D.
Person D signs this transaction with the private key provided by person A and gives it to Person E.
Person E broadcasts this signed transaction to the Bitcoin network.

Who is the thief?

Was it person A, who simply discovered the weak private key?
Person B who crafted a Bitcoin transaction ?
Person C who unknowingly received the stolen funds?
Person D who signed a transaction he did not make with a private key A gave him?
Person E who simply relayed a Bitcoin transaction?

So legally and morally speaking, which person do you consider to be the thief? which of these acts is considered "theft" to you?