All Bitcoin private keys are on this website • Hacker News Board

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#201

Post by albert_e » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

wirelesspotat wrote: post #64

Soo what happens if you're incredibly lucky and stumble across the private key for an active wallet? If you transfer the funds out, isn't that just theft? Is "guessing" a private key any different from guessing someone's bank details?

I am interested on the simple technical answer for this. Is it possible to simply take funds out if you stmble across or happen to randomly generate a valid private key?

So if I were developing such a website as posted here ... I would obviously put an automated code that transfers any funds to my own wallet (if there is a non zero wallet discovered when rendering a page on the fly). Effectively just using the millions of global user's clicks as random seed spread over long time :)

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#202

Post by hnbad » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

folli wrote: post #98

wirelesspotat wrote: post #64

Soo what happens if you're incredibly lucky and stumble across the private key for an active wallet? If you transfer the funds out, isn't that just theft? Is "guessing" a private key any different from guessing someone's bank details?

In a decentralized system, 'theft' is only a moral construct, not a legal one. And who will enforce any repercussions?

Wait, do you also think international companies are above the law?

States very much care what's going on within its borders, if its via services hosted outside them or not. And in some cases states will even care about what their citizens do outside their borders. For example, engaging in child sex tourism can have legal consequences even if the actual abuse happens in a foreign country.

Decentralization isn't magic. States will enact and enforce laws within their borders and they will have more tangible effects than any so-called "smart" contract.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#203

Post by bhouston » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

drexlspivey wrote: post #185

bhouston wrote: post #149

I completely expect in the next 10 years someone will steal Satoshi's private key for their huge horde of bitcoin. The incentives are huge.

I’ll take the over

The reason why I think it will be eventually cracked is that technology moves forward and old encryption techniques need to be upgraded, but if Satoshi is dead, he will never upgrade his key. This means that eventually it will be crackable.

Encryption over time never holds up as well as people believe it is when it is initially created. I look at MD5, designed in 1991, declared broken and insecure by 2008. SHA1, designed in 1995, declared insecure in 2005.

When git moved away from SHA1, projects could move towards SHA2 because they were still active.

Satoshi's keys can not move to better encryption techniques as things evolve if he is dead. Thus eventually his keys should be broken unless we assume that progress in cryptography is dead, or it is a solved problem. Maybe we have finally solved it for one and all, but I suspect we haven't.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#204

Post by henvic » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

teekert wrote: post #171

theden wrote: post #26

It's like passively playing the world's worst lottery in terms of odds, but hundreds of thousands of times every second. It's fun but the odds are astronomically low. I have a script[1] that generates a pub+private key and checks against a massive file of addresses with BTC[2]. The list of addresses is loaded in memory as a python `set` so checking is O(1), but I feel like optimisations at increasing the rate are fut…

And then, when you "hit the jackpot", will you become a thief? Or will you just feel like you picked a lock, smile and pull the door back shut.

Why a thief? Bitcoin is a silly idea based on scarcity that doesn't exist. If someone generated the right numbers by chance and had luck, I wouldn't say they'd be doing anything wrong getting whatever is there. It's not the same as stealing data, and is not the same as hacking into a banking system. It's decentralized, and there isn't the concept of real scarcity. It's not even hacking.

https://henvic.dev/posts/bitcoin/

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#205

Post by einr » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

brador wrote: post #143

“This website doesn't actually have a database of all private keys, that would take an impossible amount of disk space.” Exactly how much space?

32 bytes per private key, 904625697166532776746648320380374280100293470930272690489102837043110636675 possible keys =

2.89480223 × 10^52 yottabytes

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#206

Post by uniqueuid » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

theden wrote: post #26

It's like passively playing the world's worst lottery in terms of odds, but hundreds of thousands of times every second. It's fun but the odds are astronomically low. I have a script[1] that generates a pub+private key and checks against a massive file of addresses with BTC[2]. The list of addresses is loaded in memory as a python `set` so checking is O(1), but I feel like optimisations at increasing the rate are fut…

Ignoring the prospects, this is a neat case to explain sharing memory in multiprocessing.

You're reading the file in every process, this needs mem x N for N processes.

If you first read in the file, create the set, and then use multiprocessing, you will get forked processes sharing the parent's memory, i.e. only need 1 x N the memory.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#207

Post by henvic » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

mustyoshi wrote: post #127

tgv wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's the bank you would be stealing from, through fraud (impersonation, I guess). But Bitcoin is decentralized, so you wouldn't be stealing from anyone?

You're still stealing from someone, but it's harder for them to catch you.

No. You're not stealing from anyone. It's decentralized and bits have no owner. If you say 'hey, here is my Bitcoin transaction' and others accept, and you just had luck to find a valid address, it is not the same as stealing. Bitcoin has no value.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#208

Post by maxbond » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

kilroy123 wrote: post #140

caaqil wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy? https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/15/uk-man-makes-last-ditch-effo... Russ Hanneman did it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKXqZh43OH8

Oh it's even crazier. He's trying to excavate the entire land fill now. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hard-drive-lost-bitcoin-landfil...

I think he's in the same category as those startups that try to make a technology that has been repeatedly proven to be nonviable, like wireless power transmission or ducted windmills. His plans don't make sense. The government has made it clear that there will be no excavation. But that doesn't seem to matter, it's such an attractive story and there's such a mania for bitcoin that he can find backing anyway.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#209

Post by Miner49er » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #17

tromp wrote: post #4

Curiously, after hitting a random page and >> twice, I came upon this page https://playxo.com/bitcoin/904625697166532776746648320380374... that had several keys in use in the past. I would expect this website, in the rare event of discovering some positive balance, to try spending it right away...

The first page (<<) has similar patterns. Must be someone testing/debugging with hardcoded numbers.

Nah, it goes in an order. Base58check is used to convert byte arrays into the readable bitcoin addresses. So the the first address (5HpHagT65TZzG1PH3CSu63k8DbpvD8s5ip4nEB3kEsreAnchuDf) has a byte array, in hex, of: 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001

Some people used those early addresses on purpose. Maybe for testing or something or I guess maybe due to a bug or something.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#210

Post by tjungblut » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

pokepim wrote: post #175

tjungblut wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow, the private key with 10.28 eth can't be imported anywhere. The others work and are already being emptied. One way to lose your money for sure. EDIT: the aforementioned wallet can also be found as the 0x00 wallet on the very first page. Interesting collision? EDIT2: it's hardcoded https://github.com/SjorsO/keys-generator/blob/master/ethereu...

Why it cant be imported anywhere?

it's the maximum private key https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/blob/master/crypto/c... - so the public key is actually just a example and not the real public key for that private key.