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Unexpected Ways in which Bitcoin Dodged Some Cryptographic Bullets

bitcoinmagazine.com

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Re: Unexpected Ways in which Bitcoin Dodged Some Cryptographic Bullets

#41

Post by conformal »

daniel-levin wrote: post #20

> As a result, most of the decisions that Satoshi Nakamoto made in 2008 we are essentially stuck with. Every single time I read something about what 'Satoshi Nakamoto' did in designing, implementing and securing Bitcoin, I grow more skeptical that one person, or even a small group of people, created Bitcoin. It is very difficult to believe that something this sophisticated was developed by anyone other than a well fi…

i think your suggestion that bitcoin was created by one or more government agencies is a pretty good bet. it could be some other large, shady organization, but the tech is pretty highbrow and uses a lot of crypto. i have been overseeing the development of the alternative full-node bitcoin implementation, btcd, and it seems pretty clear that there was an enormous amount of novelty, insight, planning and countermeasures included in the initial release. it is unlikely that the initial 0.1.0 code was coded by a single person, but it seems pretty obvious that all the comments were removed.

without having this post balloon in size, i'll leave you with an interesting scenario:

let's say you were a member of some shadowy group and you were tasked with moving funds around the world but you didn't want intelligence services to be able to watch those funds move, e.g. via the SWIFT system. your only alternative is to move funds some other way, using an alternate system. moving physical goods around always carries risks at customs checkpoints and it is slow. this leaves some kind of an electronic value-transfer system. since one of your own group members may be a spy or otherwise untrustworthy, the system must assume everyone is untrustworthy. the obvious way to deal with untrustworthy parties is cryptography. a classic way to pass messages semi-anonymously is to "write on a wall" somewhere that you tell your counterparty to look, but others do not know to check.

if you had such a private / closed-loop value transfer system, the only real caveat is settlements in fiat currency, which all "normal" ppl use to settle transactions. if you aggregate these fiat settlements episodically using a fixed exchange rate, it effectively decouples actual meaningful transactions from the fiat transfers, obfuscating the actual transactions.

Re: Unexpected Ways in which Bitcoin Dodged Some Cryptographic Bullets

#42

Post by celticninja »

maaku wrote: post #8
raverbashing wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In essence, apart from 2, which wouldn't take too much hindsight to calculate, both items seem to be the work of a real expert in crypto. Not the ones that go for the "proven" way "because NIST said so" or the "internet specialists" that cry wolf more often than not (and miss or even suggest security holes)

Not really. The original bitcoin client did what was called direct-to-IP transactions, which didn't use hashed pubkeys, and which was vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks (oops). Bitcoin's ECDSA curve was chosen because it was one of the faster ones, not because of any NIST connection (a "real" cryptographer of the day would have probably advised against the secp256k1 curve used in bitcoin in favor of one of the N…

unless the "real" cryptographer knew about the NIST/NSA weakening of secp256r1

Re: Unexpected Ways in which Bitcoin Dodged Some Cryptographic Bullets

#43

Post by BoppreH »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #3

Who created Bitcoin? This comment seems to offer many clues: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547590 There are two groups that are on the suspects list for having engendered bitcoin, one group centers around Trinity College, another is a bunch of loosely affiliated international collaborators. Both groups are on the record with precursors to bitcoin (papers, software), neither has admitted openly that they were…

Satoshi mined bitcoins alone for a long time, back when it was easiest. If they did not lose those original coins, they are stupidly rich.

When you hit a jackpot like this, remaining silent and denying everything is one of the most sensible courses of action.

Re: Unexpected Ways in which Bitcoin Dodged Some Cryptographic Bullets

#44

Post by deelowe »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #3

Who created Bitcoin? This comment seems to offer many clues: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547590 There are two groups that are on the suspects list for having engendered bitcoin, one group centers around Trinity College, another is a bunch of loosely affiliated international collaborators. Both groups are on the record with precursors to bitcoin (papers, software), neither has admitted openly that they were…

I have a related question. Why hasn't the creator(s) come forward? What reason is there for hiding their identity?

I'm starting to add more tin foil to my hat these days and this sort of thing worries me.

Re: Unexpected Ways in which Bitcoin Dodged Some Cryptographic Bullets

#45

Post by misiti3780 »

I'm not a crypto expert at all but I do have one question:

If there is a concept of "quantum-safe" (which I did not know until reading this article), why hasn't the broader internet (HTTPS) adopted them? Is there any plans for there adoption in the future?

Re: Unexpected Ways in which Bitcoin Dodged Some Cryptographic Bullets

#46

Post by [deleted] »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #3

Who created Bitcoin? This comment seems to offer many clues: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547590 There are two groups that are on the suspects list for having engendered bitcoin, one group centers around Trinity College, another is a bunch of loosely affiliated international collaborators. Both groups are on the record with precursors to bitcoin (papers, software), neither has admitted openly that they were…

[deleted]

Re: Unexpected Ways in which Bitcoin Dodged Some Cryptographic Bullets

#47

Post by adamb_ »

daniel-levin wrote: post #20

> As a result, most of the decisions that Satoshi Nakamoto made in 2008 we are essentially stuck with. Every single time I read something about what 'Satoshi Nakamoto' did in designing, implementing and securing Bitcoin, I grow more skeptical that one person, or even a small group of people, created Bitcoin. It is very difficult to believe that something this sophisticated was developed by anyone other than a well fi…

Imagine if it really is just one individual hacker that got extremely lucky (both with Bitcoin's success & maintaining their secret identity)... What must that person be thinking right now?

Re: Unexpected Ways in which Bitcoin Dodged Some Cryptographic Bullets

#48

Post by frezik »

daniel-levin wrote: post #20

> As a result, most of the decisions that Satoshi Nakamoto made in 2008 we are essentially stuck with. Every single time I read something about what 'Satoshi Nakamoto' did in designing, implementing and securing Bitcoin, I grow more skeptical that one person, or even a small group of people, created Bitcoin. It is very difficult to believe that something this sophisticated was developed by anyone other than a well fi…

Design by Committee doesn't give you well-thought-out designs. It gives you crap like WEP and USB, where many competing voices try to drive the design in their own way.

In fact, being well-conceived and svelte is evidence that it was just a few very smart people, perhaps just one.

Re: Unexpected Ways in which Bitcoin Dodged Some Cryptographic Bullets

#49

Post by wmf »

deelowe wrote: post #44
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #3

Who created Bitcoin? This comment seems to offer many clues: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547590 There are two groups that are on the suspects list for having engendered bitcoin, one group centers around Trinity College, another is a bunch of loosely affiliated international collaborators. Both groups are on the record with precursors to bitcoin (papers, software), neither has admitted openly that they were…

I have a related question. Why hasn't the creator(s) come forward? What reason is there for hiding their identity? I'm starting to add more tin foil to my hat these days and this sort of thing worries me.

It's possible that some kind of secondary liability theory could be invented to make Satoshi an accessory to money laundering on a massive scale. But I've also noticed that communities and movements must become stronger when they outgrow their original leader. When you meet the Buddha on the road you're supposed to kill him, but most people won't. So he disappears instead.

Re: Unexpected Ways in which Bitcoin Dodged Some Cryptographic Bullets

#50

Post by eru »

Luc wrote: post #37
eru wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Floating point arithmetic is some of the least abstract math. (That doesn't make it more interesting without the right background and mindset, though.)

True, I wasn't clear I guess, but I was trying to say that not explaining WHY we had to learn something was a general feature of my university education, e.g. group theory in the case of math. They just put us physics students with the math students and we were expected to be motivated by the pure fun of learning math. If I had known how much group theory gets used in physics, I'd have put in more effort. Same thing…

Yes, presentation (and motivating the design) is key here. Just learning the IEEE floating point standard in itself is dull. Learning about the standard's history and design trade-offs might enliven the lesson somewhat. Same with group theory.
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