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Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

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Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#61

Post by demondemidi »

DANmode wrote: post #55
kube-system wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate on crypto any chance I get, but crypto has damn near a monopoly in facilitating black and/or grey market electronic transactions. It is very in demand, for instance, in helping dictators evade sanctions, or helping criminals extort or trade illegally.

I suppose you could count Venezuelans going hungry as "criminals". But I wouldn't.

Oh god this gets trotted out every time someone points out the evil that crypto facilitates. Give it a rest. It pales in comparison and there are many other solutions that your argument conveniently ignores.

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#63

Post by manquer »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #60
PUSH_AX wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean how weak are they really? These guys knew the algo and still struggled and pestered the user over and over for the other parameters. They also had what I would describe as an extreme motivation to crack this.

If it had a default creation setting, it would be much easier to crack most user's passwords. There's still a motivation issue, but that's not a solid defense.

> Motivation issue

i.e threat model.

A lot of security processes are not designed for say state actors with library of 0- days or monopoly on violence(i.e. $5 wrench) that doesn’t make them bad.

Security is a spectrum, perhaps some subset users needed a more secure system most probably still benefited from this tool ?

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#64

Post by ars »

INTPenis wrote: post #24
malshe wrote: post #3

> Michael says he was lucky that he lost the password years ago because, otherwise, he would have sold off the bitcoin when it was worth $40,000 a coin and missed out on a greater fortune. This is so true for stocks too

Yes but stocks are usually tied to a business producing some sort of service that people want, and therefore have value. Crypto is tied to, checks notes nothing.

Dollars are also tied to nothing. A towel with the logo of a sports team also has zero intrinsic value. Same with a shiny lump of useless metal.

That's because being tied to something, or having intrinsic value is not how things gain value.

Things, crypto, dollars, gold, and towels, have value because people WANT them. That's it.

You even touched on it: "some sort of service that people want, and therefore have value" - crypto provides a service people want, therefore by your own words it has value.

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#65

Post by massysett »

malshe wrote: post #3

> Michael says he was lucky that he lost the password years ago because, otherwise, he would have sold off the bitcoin when it was worth $40,000 a coin and missed out on a greater fortune. This is so true for stocks too

Is it true if you had Apple stock, or Amazon? Yes.

Unfortunately others owned Sears Roebuck, or Enron.

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#66

Post by Manabu-eo »

tosl559 wrote: post #35
kick_in_the_dor wrote: post #23

"Michael... now has 30 BTC, now worth $3 million, and is waiting for the value to rise to $100,000 per coin." What the ? You presumably go from not a millionaire to having $3,000,000, and you decide to risk it to triple it? That's some next level greed right there.

You want him to swap absolutely scarce Bitcoin for something that can be printed infinitely out of thin air? Swapping to dollars would be the risk here.

Only since crypto boom I see people (crypto aficionados) thinking of money as an investment. And that makes no sense, as you explain yourself.

Dollars are much less volatile and thus less risky than any crypto currency I know. A perfect intermediate step before investing in some equity or some other thing that produces value.

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#67

Post by astrange »

ars wrote: post #64
INTPenis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but stocks are usually tied to a business producing some sort of service that people want, and therefore have value. Crypto is tied to, checks notes nothing.

Dollars are also tied to nothing. A towel with the logo of a sports team also has zero intrinsic value. Same with a shiny lump of useless metal. That's because being tied to something, or having intrinsic value is not how things gain value. Things, crypto, dollars, gold, and towels, have value because people WANT them. That's it. You even touched on it: "some sort of service that people want, and therefore have value…

Dollars have fundamental demand because, among other things, you have to pay US sales taxes in them.

> Things, crypto, dollars, gold, and towels, have value because people WANT them. That's it.

People would want a lot of things if those things were free, question is what the demand curve is.

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#68

Post by astrange »

hnbear wrote: post #7

Time for a new investment strategy that involves buying whatever (index funds?) then losing your password to force a hold till the encryption algo has been cracked or compute power makes it easy to brute-force. Call it the Moore’s Law Fund.

That's what a retirement account is for.

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#69

Post by comprambler »

kevindamm wrote: post #47
dylan604 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After your reco after the GP's reco, I would have to agree. This is well done. However, coming from a coding/dev background, it was easy to follow and it all makes sense. However, it goes to show why hacking will never be made interesting in movies without a bunch of fake nonsense like hacking the Gibson's 3D virtual environment.

The best and worst examples were in the same movie, IMO: Nedry's finger-wagging admonishment and all hell breaking loose, then later, "it's a Unix system, I know this!" and some exotic file manager visualization.

That exotic file manager vis was a real SGI prog called fsn. Exists for sunos as well.

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#70

Post by mindcandy »

kick_in_the_dor wrote: post #23

"Michael... now has 30 BTC, now worth $3 million, and is waiting for the value to rise to $100,000 per coin." What the ? You presumably go from not a millionaire to having $3,000,000, and you decide to risk it to triple it? That's some next level greed right there.

Math is mixed up. He's got 43.6 BTC. Currently worth $68K each, for a total of $2.9 mil. He's waiting for it to be worth $4.4 mil.

I'm betting his retirement math worked out to $4.4 mil before taxes. And, $100k is a human-bias round number that BTC is widely expected to hit in the next year.

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