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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

#111

Post by roenxi »

evilfred wrote: post #93
ars wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

US dollars are backed by the US economy and military

If US dollars can be backed by a military, crypto is backed by mining networks.

The mining network is a lot more productive than the US military which has vastly negative economic output. At least ASICs doesn't wander around wrecking countries in a semi-random fashion. The mining network even operates at a profit, which is much better than the US government by a huge margin. Someone thinks they are worth the money.

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

#112

Post by BLKNSLVR »

kube-system wrote: post #38
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.

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.

Part of the reason that the US Government has been trying for the last few years to squash it is because it's threatening the US Dollar's hegemony in, cough, international trade.

If you're buying illegal black market shit, you're darn well gonna do it using the Red, White, and Blue's Green!

This is also proof of cryptocurrency's use-case as a method of value transfer (ie. currency). Crime and porn are the traditional testing grounds for new disruptive technologies. I remember this thing called the Internet...

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

#113

Post by nitwit005 »

PUSH_AX wrote: post #30
arp242 wrote: 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.

You can often learn when people create online accounts. Sometimes to the second or millisecond. It commonly shows on people's profiles.

You can then try to log into every account, with passwords generated with the default settings.

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

#114

Post by GrantMoyer »

mindcandy wrote: post #70
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.

Considering bitcoin call options for March 2025 are going for only about 12k, I think it's fair to say the consensus is that bitcoin exceding 100k in about a year is unlikely.

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

#115

Post by sharperguy »

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.

Bitcoin has a locktime opcode[1] which allows you to set a time when the transaction output can be spent, effectively locking the funds irrevocably for a fixed amount of time.

[1]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Timelock

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

#116

Post by GrantMoyer »

loa_in_ wrote: post #105
GrantMoyer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used the absolute language "can't" intentionally, because frankly, in most contexts outside pure math it's more misleadling to state guessing a sufficiently long truely random password is possible than to say it's impossible. Humans can't really intuitively handle probabilities so small. It's the same reason we say heat "always" flows from higher to lower temerature.

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

#117

Post by BLKNSLVR »

csomar wrote: post #107
DANmode wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure if you're being "technically correct, the best kind of correct" or trying to actually specify the definition.

Actual definition: In the Western world, a "criminal" is any person tried and convicted of breaking the law.

Your definition is, however, correct for how it sometimes works and how "they" would like it to work. (where your use of the word "mandate" means "whichever direction the wind is currently blowing").

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

#118

Post by soulofmischief »

INTPenis wrote: post #40
jen729w wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m no shill for crypto, but you can’t with a straight face claim that all non-crypto financial instruments are ‘tied to … some sort of service that people want’. There’s a whole world of shady crap going on in the ‘legitimate’ financial space.

Oh absolutely. Money is the root of all evil. But crypto bros are often delusional about what intrinsical value exists in the normal market, compared to crypto coins where they invent the value. Therefore manipulation of value compared to real world markets becomes a lot more abstract.

Humans are the root of evil, and money is how we exert control.

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

#119

Post by kube-system »

fallingsquirrel wrote: post #87
demondemidi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The vast majority of bitcoin use is legal. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29396/w293... > For example, illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume. Sure there's the odd dumb criminal who doesn't understand the prosecutorial implications of an immutable public ledger. But it pales in comparison, according to the actual data.

Yes, because most of the transfers happening are speculative investment trades, arbitrage, etc. People moving money around, without paying for anything.

That source says, when it comes to the demand in terms of spending crypto for goods or services:

> 46% of transactions are due to illegal transactions

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

#120

Post by tempestn »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #46
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.

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.

It is possible to sell less than all of the bitcoin.
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