Topic: wtf is this... (Read 1311 times)

why is this public... I didn't know everyone had access to everyone's private keys...

A bitcoin address (frequently and mistakenly referred to as a "public key") is derived from a private key. Actually, it works like this: The bitcoin address is derived from the public key, which is derived from the private key.

See ... that's what I thought, in order to steel from a wallet you'd need both the private and the matching public key ... I mean, the chances alone of guessing a private key are slim, but the chances of also guessing the matching public key is about as close to Zero as you can get.  

But that website's FAQs seems to be saying that if you know the private key, the public address can be generated from the private key.  Is that BS?


I'm not doubting that bitcoin is safe... it is self-evident that it is safe ... I'm just trying to get a better understand of how it works.  

Don't worry OP this site has been around for a while. It's more or less a gag as the chances of matching up someone's keys are ridiculous. You'd have a better chance of jumping out of an airplane and getting attacked by a shark inside of a rain cloud whilst getting struck by lightning...

i don't sure its reason of existence, though faq has more valid reason i think. IMO that directory is a way to view all the possible combinations of prototype bitcoin address.

Look at the amount of pages. Look at the private keys and how the vary very little in between each other, with only the last few characters changing. Now think about whatever your private key is, and how hard it would be to find your key specifically on a website that doesn't even let you search for the private keys and would force you to scroll through every page. The chances of you ever having your private key stolen are next to nothing (and they even explain that math makes it nearly impossible), and this is no different than doing a guess-and-check for private keys. Someone could try to do the same thing by themselves, it would never, or it at least is highly unlikely, to yield results.

Well, at least something good will come from this experience, probably the first thing you should do is to read the bitcoin white paper, in fact I think that should be mandatory.

OMG, Bitcoin is unsafe! I'm going to convert all my BTC to BCH!

/s

yes. the private key is, well, the key to anyone's funds.

and the odds of a conventionally generated private key being on there are indeed astronomical.

http://directory.io/faq

A wild guess would be people send small amounts to some the listed addresses as some kind of a joke/game. Then see if they can quickly withdraw it before somebody else does.

Hey, I might just do that later when I get home.

So, in theory if someone were to start clicking around there and stumble on a private key with a balance, they would be able to steal it?  I know it's astronomical odds, but that is how it would work?

No one can access to private key. Brother i would tell you that look at the name it is mentioned private key what is the meaning of private key so you will know better that what I'm talking about so no one can access private keys because these are too different. They are private and cannot be trace by another or get by another person.

Yes same as your bitcoin balance which is a very good example of this. Lol

Even without that site, everyone has access to everyone's private keys. A private key is just a number between 1 and 0xfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffebaaedce6af48a03bbfd25e8cd0364140.

That user does not know what they are talking about.  I'm no expert but my understanding is that private keys are a number, and that the amount of possible private keys that there could ever be is just under 2^256.  

If you want to understand just how safe that amount is, please refer to this video, which will explain just how long it would take to calculate the private keys with the greatest supercomputer ever.

Now what you need to understand is that when you have a ridiculously large amount of possible numbers that could ever be created, there are also very small numbers.  An example of a very small number is 1.  People can use any private key to access their coins, and therefore people with poor wallet software or people who created their private keys themselves could use the number 1.

Any normal wallet software will randomise your private key, which extremely close to 100% of the time results in a crazily large number that no one will ever calculate.  The chance of that not happening is so low that you can safely ignore it, as can everyone in the world.

---

The first page on directory.io is showing the private key numbers 0 to 127.  Because those numbers are extremely low, someone has decided to use them as their private key, either as a joke or because they're extremely dumb.  Of course people know those private keys, so they steal funds from them and the balance is 0.

What you don't understand is that directory.io is in fact not a database.  It just generates the private keys' addresses when you go onto each page.  But you can never go through any noticeable amount of the pages.  

---

Security test:  type in an extremely large random number (for example, 947184818258275825772489752923525971841411113849).  You should put it into the domain like directory.io/947184818258275825772489752923525971841411113849.  Now look at the addresses.  Have any of them been used?  No.  No currently existing computer would find funds created using decent wallet software, ever.

Yeap you really shouldn`t worry about it, it is just impossible to hack someones wallet. Mathematicaly and physicaly

  reminds me

http://sam.zoy.org/fun/google-diverters/pgp.html

or

What do you mean about why does that happen? It's just a normal thing being done by addresses: send and receive bitcoins. Also, you could not really "guess" which of those private keys have something in them so really, good luck on spending hours on that site.

why does that happen 

If you check some you will find that there are a lot of address that have been used but the total balance is always 0.