Live data from Hacker News

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

wired.com

101–110 of 196 posts

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

#101
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can try millions of passwords on a wallet without anything stopping you. You only get a few guesses on a bank site.

If you only get a few guesses on a bank site, then you can inconvenience large numbers of users cheaply.

Sure, but I’d take being inconvenienced over having my accounts compromised

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

#104
post #30
post #13

So Roboform has almost certainly thousands (of not millions) of users with weak passwords, and not only didn't they tell anyone, all they give is a shrug when asked about it. What a bunch of bozos.

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.

The fact that a password could be cracked at all means it was very weak. Strong passwords can't be cracked with any realistic amount of resources or motivation.

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

#105
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.

The fact that a password could be cracked at all means it was very weak. Strong passwords can't be cracked with any realistic amount of resources or motivation.

There's a small chance that your password will be my first roll in a random generator.

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

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the greatest uses of crypto is the ability to transfer any amount of money to any point on earth for next to nothing and no questions asked. That is worth more than most any other use for crypto.

So you can use it to conduct illegal cross border money transfers... of course most cryptos aren't anonymous and even those are you still need to transfer it to a local currency etc. for that functionality to be useful.

> So you can use it to conduct illegal cross border money transfers

That's exactly the use of crypto. Illegal being based on a random law by a random government in a random country.

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

#107
post #55

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.

In the Western world, a "criminal" is any person not conforming to the government mandated system of work and transactions.

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

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI he's not gambling the bitcoin, he's holding onto it, and given it's history, which is the sub-story, it seems to be the smart thing to do not the risky/ dumb thing to do, especially in the current stage of the cycle.

None of that makes any sense whatsoever.

Not if you're the sort of person who dismisses it out of hand, no.

In the context of understanding that Bitcoin is the best performing asset over its admittedly small lifetime, then it just sorta kinda might just start the process of making sense to unthaw a little.

This justification is only valid for certain time-scales however, and once you get into a discussion of that it can easily degenerate into cherry-picking and misaligned points - and I can be accused of cherry picking in limiting my judgement to "over it's admittedly small lifetime".

Basically, it comes down to a difference of opinion in the long-term value of an asset that hasn't existed long-term. If using the only available data, being short-term, as a guide, then it could be predicted to be a great investment.

Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns. True of everything. I guess you and me both are just showing our different colours based on, potentially, the exact same reference data (although I'm going to assume my reference data set is larger and/or more varied than yours).

Alternate comprehension of your comment: He's not gambling his Bitcoin, he's holding it. At the "end" he will still have the same number of Bitcoin. I believe your misunderstanding is that it may represent a smaller US dollar value and therefore he's gambling his bitcoin, however this means he's actually gambling the value of his bitcoin - which I specifically didn't say.

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

#109
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.

People want drugs, it’s a huge industry. Drugs aren’t going away buddy.

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

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the greatest uses of crypto is the ability to transfer any amount of money to any point on earth for next to nothing and no questions asked. That is worth more than most any other use for crypto.

Except that you cant, in a practical sense. I can sell crypto to anyone, anywhere. That cannot be used to purchase anything, anywhere. Its only useful for a very narrow subset.

It can be exchanged for other currencies.
Post reply on HN