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“My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen”

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431–440 of 564 posts

Re: “My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen”

#431

Context now that the editorialised title has changed, this is a core Bitcoin developer. These things happen every day, but happening to a core developer (if confirmed!) who has a deep understanding of the systems and security indicates just how fragile crypto can be (in my opinion)

> These things happen every day, but happening to a core developer (if confirmed!) who has a deep understanding of the systems and security indicates just how fragile crypto can be (in my opinion) Because no one can create secure software yet, Bitcoin isn't 100% secure.

by that logic, no banking software can ever be secure either

Re: “My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen”

#432

Apparently his servers keep getting hacked, which doesn’t reflect well on his security practices: https://twitter.com/LukeDashjr/status/1606885577843957762

Just a few days ago he popped into friend's Twitter thread about similarities between Freenode and Twitter situations, and announced that it was Libera Chat that conducted a hostile takeover against Freenode.

Somewhat I'm not surprised at all.

Re: “My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen”

#433
post #344
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why lack of consumer protections suck Agreed, and the problem is that this is a feature . Without that feature of a lack of central control, Bitcoin's main use case is invalid.

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Re: “My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen”

#434
post #271

Context now that the editorialised title has changed, this is a core Bitcoin developer. These things happen every day, but happening to a core developer (if confirmed!) who has a deep understanding of the systems and security indicates just how fragile crypto can be (in my opinion)

>These things happen every day, but happening to a core developer (if confirmed!) who has a deep understanding of the systems and security indicates just how fragile crypto can be (in my opinion) Based on the other comments in this thread it looks like he didn't bother using a hardware wallet (which is literally something that's recommended on bitcoin.org[1]), and kept his wallet.dat on a server exposed to the intern…

The original argument is still valid.

It doesn't matter if he did it right or not.

He got robbed and he will never see his crypto again.

How on earth would anyone with less knowledge than him be able to do it right.

You probably give up explaing my mom why she should have used a hardware wallet...

Re: “My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen”

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re saying that to use crypto properly, I have to secure a physical object that grants irrevocable ownership of my wealth? That sounds bad. Is there a way I can get my crypto held my an institution with SIPC insurance, the way I hold stocks at a brokerage, so I can outsource this issue to someone else who is backed by a government guarantee? (I obviously don’t expect them to guarantee the value of the crypto, j…

It's not about money, it's about power. If you hold a physical item, you have the maximum power over it as possible. If you want to entrust someone else with it, go ahead, but at the end of the day your access to the item will be subject to their whims and those of the greater political establishment / woke clergy / corrupt and powerful.

As Canadian truckers learned first-hand quite recently.

Re: “My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen”

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about money, it's about power. If you hold a physical item, you have the maximum power over it as possible. If you want to entrust someone else with it, go ahead, but at the end of the day your access to the item will be subject to their whims and those of the greater political establishment / woke clergy / corrupt and powerful.

And if you entrust it to a safe deposit box, then... ? And if you trust it to a safe in your bedroom, and your house burns down, then... ? Which is more likely?

A hardware wallet is a physical device that stores some private keys in a tamper-proof secure element. Those private keys can be regenerated from a recovery phrase[1] which acts as a seed to regenerate the keys in a deterministic way.

The hardware device is typically itself secured by means of a pin. Without the pin, the device can’t be unlocked so can’t be used, too many incorrect pin attempts will brick the device.

So the answers to your questions are:

1) If you entrust it to a safe deposit box then if someone steals it, it is worthless without the pin.

2) If the safe is itself destroyed and with it the device (this is also the case if you have it in a safe deposit box and the depository is burned down or something) then the private keys (and transitively the funds) can still be recovered using the recovery phrase. So if you have securely stored your recovery phrase and are able to retrieve it even this kind of problem won’t cause the accounts to be lost.

So what people tend to recommend is choosing good secure storage for your pin, keeping reasonable physical care of the device, taking the recovery phrase and splitting it into parts and storing those parts separately. If one of the parts is destroyed then you will need to urgently replace the hardware wallet, move the funds and securely store the new recovery phrase because if not you don’t have a fallback if the hardware wallet is destroyed, but otherwise you are good.

[1] https://medium.com/coinmonks/mnemonic-generation-bip39-simpl...

Re: “My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen”

#438

Could this be a "boating accident" since it's tax season? Or maybe only his Twitter was hacked? No info from him at his mastodon https://mastodon.social/@lukedashjr@bitcoinhackers.org If true this is absolutely devastating. Somewhat funny too, but devastating. edit: Well, it's confirmed. Insane. https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/1609655629903265795 https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/1609666001251229696

When referring to Peter Todd, it's worth remembering that he's accused of rape and may not be a reliable source: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.34...

Re: “My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen”

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it a reasonable point? I would assume that if you are a major player in the bitcoin world, you should do complicated things to secure yourself. Its sort of like if someone wins the lottery, and tells the world they are putting the money under their mattress in their home. Its not unreasonable to say that such a person faces more risk than an ordinary person and should install an alarm system or something.

You would assume. But, empirically, users don't - even users who should know better. Users don't . If your model doesn't take that into account, your model is broken. The Bitcoin model is broken. It very intentionally got rid of all the institutions that regulate and control finance, and in doing so, it got rid of everything that protects regular people from the wolves. The regular people aren't up to the task of pro…

So to be clear - i agree that bitcoin is a shitshow, haven for fraudsters and generally sucks.

But to the specific point, there is no model that fully takes this into account. There is no model that puts risk to zero. There will always be adversaries that can attack you if the payoff is large enough. There will always be people with increased risk exposure who have to take special precautions because the effort/reward calculus makes sense for malicious people to attack them.

The reason bitcoin sucks is not because its model includes such situations; it sucks because the bar for someone to be the type of person who has to care about such things in bitcoin is so much lower than in traditional banking.

Re: “My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen”

#440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you entrust it to a safe deposit box, then... ? And if you trust it to a safe in your bedroom, and your house burns down, then... ? Which is more likely?

A hardware wallet is a physical device that stores some private keys in a tamper-proof secure element. Those private keys can be regenerated from a recovery phrase[1] which acts as a seed to regenerate the keys in a deterministic way. The hardware device is typically itself secured by means of a pin. Without the pin, the device can’t be unlocked so can’t be used, too many incorrect pin attempts will brick the device.…

I wonder, couldn't a such "wallet" be built on top of secure element (i.e on iOS/android)? Carrying around an additional device just for "wallet" features is very inconvenient.
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