Bitcoin Forum

What if bitcoin miners are being used to generate rainbow tables for cracking password hashes. It is a known fact that with a rainbow table you can crack a password hash in seconds rather than years, and in big-O notation brute-forcing passwords takes O(n²) time which would also take years for a 14+ character password.

Now to generate a rainbow table with character set 0-9, a-z, A-Z, + all special characters (@!#$%^&*(){}/*-+_=) would also take years to generate in advance if you don't have access to a distributed grid of computers dividing the processing power between themselves. And it costs quite abit of BTC to buy processing power from the cloud. And coming to think of it, aren't the bitcoins miners doing just that?

Here's the genius part. What if the CIA/NSA devised a way so that the bitcoin miners are actually generating the rainbow hashes needed to crack any password up to 64 characters in length. Wouldn't that practically give them access to any corporation + home wifi + any account needed?

I can think of a multitude of applications to the bitcoin distributed network, not excluding DDOSing, generating hashes for different types of decoding algorithms such as MD5, SHA1 (which are the most commonly used to protect passwords in databases), etc. Even the term that miners are generating hashes gives you the slight doubt that, what if?

Alright you might argue that now developers are using salt mechanism, but still...its food for thought. Any fanboys who read the code, care to give their opinion? Now don't get me wrong, I'm just inserting the notion of what if? I quite like the uses of bitcoin myself.

The CIA or NSA want to crack passwords. So, instead of simply building a chip that hashes data using various hashing algorithms, the CIA or NSA develops a revolutionary payment system with the hope that four years later some Chinese dudes are motivated to develop chips that do a very specific kind of hashing that might not even be useful for cracking passwords.

Yeah, that makes sense.

there's no need for NSA or other similar agencies (too many) to invent a damn complex crypto currency in order to get hashing power to crack passwords lol

they can achieve way more without any cracking

have a look at this talk to refresh your ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILAlhwUgIU

 ;)

Bitcoin, if it were to gain mainstream adoption, would be the end of the NSA/CIA/governments/wars/etc.

Indeed it does make sense.
The OP is right.
They are cracking passwords as we speak.
Shit, they cracked my password just now.... :o
In fact, this is them posting this.... ::)


LOL!
Sorry, I couldn't help it :P

That would have been a bit impossible with Open Source code availlable to other countries, who have also VERY talented software engineers.

This is not to say that they have not tried it before.. Take the whole hardware backdoor that was built into Cisco routers a while ago. There were many countries who did not even know that this existed, until it was
found and exposed to the public.

According to the NSA whistleblowers, they have loads of hidden access to many VPN's / ISP's etc. etc... So it would not surprise me at all, if they did try to sneak it past us in a update.

Gavin did visit them, and he was one of the lead engineers in the field. It would be a massive hit to the Bitcoin community, IF they tried that shite.  

the whole fact that EVERYONE involved with btc claims to have never met "satoshi" but only communicated with "him" though this forum or email does seem strange to me.  If you read about edward snowden he used similar tactics (he was a CIA agent) to hide his identity until he knew it was safe to talk to the journalists he was communicating with.

Then again, maybe they all have met satoshi and are just saying they "never met him" to keep the whole secrecy thing in tact

Snowden was not a CIA agent.

He was a contractor working on a CIA project.

True, but the access he had was akin to root access (sysadmin). A field operative would be the lowest on the totem pole (as people understand CIA agents as the Bourne guy).

A desk guy working in a NOC or SOC would get tons of access and the bigger picture. Everything has to pass through you. That was the level of access Snowden had though.

Yes he was a CIA agent doing computer work, after he was medically discharged from the army.  Clearly you haven't followed his case too closely.

He was not an agent at the time of the leaks/NSA revelations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#CIA

Yes, lots of people value their privacy, but to go to those lengths that "satoshi" did to keep his identity private to those he was WORKING DIRECTLY WITH and handing over the control of the forum/ control of bitcoin seem far fetched.  I mean at the time it was such a relatively obscure project with few users, why go to such lengths to hide your identity?  There's no way he could have known it would get this big.

Coming to think of it, why did he go to such lengths, and even after it became so big, why not take credit and be hailed as a hero? He wouldn't be prosecuted like Snowden would be. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I would love you to explain why you think it would be the end of NSA/CIA/GOVT and (WARS) please tell me you don't believe this fairytale?

OP I doubt very much he has anything to do with either 3 letter agency who want to use the miners to crack passwords, they can already do this without the need for so much hashing power. Plus where is it going to be hid in open source?

 

I guess, there is no way that Satoshi Nakamoto belongs to Central Intelligence Agency or National Security Agency, If it is then Satoshi wouldn't be supporting Julian Assange during his crisis when U.S has banned him regards to his money or fund transactions through the main banks all over the world.

probably because if he did have some sort of cia/nsa connection, he would know that he would be targeted (just like snowden).  And he would know that the us govt/bankers do not like competition to the usd, which btc is.

Sir, I think you have it backwards. Can you post a link or a reference to this?

No.  They're not.

Anyway, try entering a wrong password more than 3 times on your online credit card or banking site.
See what happens.

God the title of the thread caught my attention so much, is actually pretty interesting and it could make has a movie a rough coder goes against the government to create a financial revolution.

What the OP was probably referring to is they crack the password hash that is stored in the dB. That way you don't need 3 tries, cause you get it on the first try.

I know this is unrelated to the thread, but OP, are you fontas by any chance? You know that your handle is "fontas" spelt backwards right?

Sounds more like some conspiracy theory fanatics to me.

the fact that you lump all "conspiracy theory fanatics" into one group, tells me you are not a very critical thinker.  Many topics that were once "conspiracy theories" have been proven true.  I dont need to list them here, I'll let you research that on your own.

Even his nickname sounds like a  freakin conspiracy theory to me. You know who fontas was right?

It makes for an awesome story though I tell you.

Only if CIA/NSA agents were somehow motivated to massively undermine the power of their own government.

Or if he is FORMER CIA/NSA and has good reason to undermine their abuse of power...

honestly I have thought a lot about this and it really doesn't seem too far fetched to think he at least has some connection to cia/nsa/fbi just due to his ability alone to conceal his identity.  Lots of people TRY to conceal their identity, but for him to be in contact with people enough to hand over the whole project and never leave any trace of his identity sounds like it would take a lot, something that he was intentionally doing, possibly something he was trained to do

LOL , The monstrous LISTER STORM www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I6GWORyWHc

https://itinerantneerdowell.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/cat-tin-foil-hat.png

Wow I never thought this thread would take a life of its own. Maybe I should do a kickstarter on creating a documentary on the life of satoshi.

To answer the naysayers about Open Source code, most people don't bother reviewing millions of lines of code for every open source product they download.

You go by what people say most of the time. And also a software team comprised of 8 people created the first Microsoft Windows 3.1x based on MSDOS.

Worldwide corporations don't need more than a skeleton staff of 70 people (including support staff which Bitcoin doesn't have) to run a successful multimillion forbes list company. You can keep everything contained quite nicely if you have the initial resources and manpower.

Kaspersky Labs in their analysis for the government said the blockchain can be used to deliver malicious payloads to targets.

Chew on those facts for a second.

In case of that kind of stories I always wonder why federals needed to make an inside job to close first silkroad, instead of using some hidden feature of bitcoin protocol ;]

I am involved in real estate...I can barely remember my gmail password.


For someone like Satoshi to create a complex and brilliant thing like Bitcoin, I would hope he had the skills to hide his identity...its only logical. It doesn't mean he was CIA.

The best story is the "Satoshi time traveler story" where he was allegedly sponsored by corporations of the future. Someone probably has the link.

Why NSA need to crack password? They can use others way like malware, communication tapping. I think cracking password is a conventional way.

I could understand if they would create tool like bitcoin, which is attractive to shady users, and then they could follow their transactions more easily, but
this password cracking seams extremely far fetched.

cheers

In all reality, CIA/NSA people don't get paid shit. So if he did work for those agencies you can damn well believe that he would have cashed out those early bitcoins years ago.

It is more likely that he worked in the private sector and has previously created something that gave him enough money to enjoy a comfortable life where money is not that big of a deal.

If it was a CIA/NSA project then that would mean multiple people would have access to those private keys. A simple act of writing down the key and sticking it in your shoe would allow you to retire from your shitty paying CIA/NSA job.

Excuse me sir what are you talking about? Don't look at entry level salaries. Those mean nothing. You move up in scale as the years progress.

is an average $150k/year + $50k/year addendum to the contract for being on-call & shift duty not enough salary for you? I bet you'd jump at the opportunity.

I think what you're referring to is when Dell subcontracts for an agency, they have SLAs (service level agreements) that they're forced to meet, but still pay shit money to employees. The government takes care of its most valued assets.

I definitely would not jump at the opportunity, I made more than that last year when I was in Afghanistan and if I were to transfer over to a CIA/NSA position I would likely have the experience for a GS-12 which pays around $80k in my area and that's after almost 20 years of experience. $150k is the GS-15 pay which is the highest you can receive.

A GS-15 would be management level, not the guy writing the code and handling the private keys making squat.

he can't spend his coin because he don't have access to his wallet....i'm pretty sure he have lost his private keys....
the question is....why these bitcoins are dormient  for years ? if you had created something that could make you rich , why the hell did not use it ? at least a part of them ....
I do not believe that satoshi created everything ' to free , maybe it was not for profit , but when values ​​have risen why not enjoy the money you earn?

The only way I could see the NSA/CIA doing it is if they had the director of the operation standing over them ensuring that they deleted the private keys for every mined block, and then had multiple people supervise the destruction of the hard drive where the private key existed (every 10 minutes).

Two FBI guys were exposed to private keys worth a lot less and they ended up stealing them.

We are after all dealing with government employees here. :D Most of these guys are getting paid much better than their peers in the private sector. ^joke^
Do you think a agency exposed him and he was forced to destroy it? He is such a genius, I would think that he committed his whole private key to memory. ^joke#2^

At least, you have a very bright and creative mind. I don't think it's even possible to hash passwords with this algo ? And you can't change asics anymore to create different algorithms.

I genuinely believe that the NSA/CIA can crack what they need to crack. These agencies have literally undisclosed and unlimited amounts; in the billions upon billions of dollars of funding at their disposal. They operate with little to no oversight. Even groups within them are assembled and given virtually unlimited budgets for "non-existant" projects.

The question is would they admit to the fact they could crack "any password" for reasons of:

- Constitutional Legality
- Risking jeopardizing their abilities which results in change of tactics by those under their watch.

Quantum computing is not necessarily out of the realm of possibilities in the future. And I have no doubt that the NSA can throw quite some interesting password rainbow/hash tables totally unavailable to the general public, combined with nearly unlimited compute power.

Again, just speculation; but I'd say you could have a password, true random, in the 30+ characters with even the most secure encryption algo and these agencies if need be would be able to zip right in.

They would, in my opinion, never let anyone know they did, or could, not even the offender or the person being looked into.

Again, unlimited money, power, and no oversight. Combine that with a huge army of damn smart people.

I'm just glad they are US Agencies ;)

The fact that you mention Snowden is interesting. Now when I think about it it is totally possible that Snowden had access to information of highest clarence status.
But he did not mention Bitcoin in any of his reports, so either bitcoin is not CIA, NSA doing or truth is hidden so deep that even critical agents don't know about it.

He did have access to a lot of highly classified info, but that doesn't necessarily mean he had knowledge of everything.  He was moreso involved in computer surveilance type work.  Its possible btc would have been just a small project by only a few members, and possibly designed to be handed off to look like it came from outside the gvt

I think some gus give way too much credit to the government. Granted, they have tons of geniuses working there that have come up with technologies such as Tor encryption, but not every technological breakthrough has to come from the gov. I think Satoshi is/were totally unrelated to governmental agencies.

I'd have to agree.

What most people don't know is that Satoshi Nakamoto was nothing more than a school science project for a technology pilot school:  Nakamoto Elementary School; which is located in Japan. The project which won first honors was by a gifted student (what would be in the US a 6th grader) with a given name of Satoshi. For minor/age reasons they released only his first name; and his white paper which was given a major re-polish by his teacher/mentor who helped him throughout - decided the project would be published under the nom de plure Satoshi Nakamoto. In honor of Satoshi, the boy, and Nakamoto, the school.

Nothing more.

Lastly; the project was then released online; and picked up by a totally different group of "first adopters" who then took it and ran with it.

But the early wallets, which were used meerly as a proof of "it works" - were discarded. Which is why all those Bitcoins in those first wallets - large sums; have never moved. At all. They never will. They saw no value. Thumbdrives thrown away.

[citation needed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)]

I hate to be a buzz kill, but in the absence of any evidence whatsoever... Well you do realize your just writing fiction, right?

What isnt fiction? ;)

Nakamoto Elementary School. It is there, take a look.

Nakamoto is a very common Japanese surname. I went to Japan once and I remember in the hotel there was a list of of people that were attending a meeting in the restaurant and I saw at least 2 persons that had Nakamoto on the name (i can read some of the kanji stuff)

http://whyareyoustupid.com/wp-content/uploads/0.jpg



So far as I know Bitcoin is open-source project and code was reviewed thousand times by great coders from around the world.
So far nobody found any hidden traps. What I am saying is your speculation is senseless.



PS.

Are you serious? :) mostly asking about home wifi part :)
Come on ... :) ...

@Satoshi, please tell us one day how much were you laughing from all of those speculations :) But well ... most of those speculations are not funny at all I must say and pointless.


Best regards.

My point was this thread is well a bit pointless.

Commenting, speculating about things which no one here has any, zero, nothing, zip, information on.

Just having fun. I'd say my post holds about as much weight as most of the "what ifs" posted in this thread.

;)

well, it's a given that it is pure speculation and just a working theory. I don't have the leisure of time to go cross-examine the code, but if someone funds the project or we can maybe do some type of collective funding, then I will get a team organized to put this theory to rest.

Obviously if there's interest. I mean it would make for a badass movie if it's true, but yes it is science fiction only at this point, and in the trollolol archive is where it should be filed until further proof emerges.  ;)

Let's say you get funded to do your thing. how would you go about testing it?

Would you be willing to disclose your real identity to publish your research on the subject?

And why don't you include some of the other plausible theories while you're at it?

Some people don't care about personal recognition. Bitcoin has been a success and Satoshi is rich, he doesn't need to be famous. Also, it's a bad idea to disclose your identity when you are doing something that could challenge the banking status quo.

fair points there.

The way I would probably go about it, is to simulate the bitcoin network in a closed loop, and then test to capture what kind of data packets are being sent outside of the network or if the "complex equations the miners are solving" are being stored in some kind of repository. I'm thinking it doesn't need to be a large network but you need to be scalable in your testing, so more than few nodes are needed for sure.

Apart from that I'd hire people to go through the actual source code.

2nd point I would have to agree with manselr and not disclose my personal identifiable information.

3rd answer to your question is if we test other theories, it would become endless. I just want to know if bitcoin is secure as a protocol to use or not. There are so many theories that are wild out there, so tell me which ones are plausible and i'll tell you if it's doable or not.

You do not have the security clearance to know that, or to even ask the question. ;D
No evidence just speculation. Bitcoin is open source, stop making up bullshit.

bullshit is what the economy thrives on, my fellow random person on a forum.  ;D

MOAR!!!

well is a good point the US navy created TOR , and actually at the doors of creating quantum computers, but I have doubts that created bitcoin, they are not the only people with genius minds.

The NSA secret files were cracked and absconded by Eric Snowden. The CIA bungled intelligence and misled us into an unnecessary Iraq War.

These two organizations are far too inept and compromised to come up with such an elaborate scheme.

Are you saying they're dumb? Cause if you see what you stand to gain from the Iraq war. Isn't it obvious that you're literally taking every little scrap of fossil fuel oil left on the planet, while you're making the rest of the world change to gas power stations and heavy subsidies on households who invest in solar arrays.

NSA has been literally spying on its own citizens. It knows that rebellion is brewing in the hearts and minds of many. So it has to be on top of the situation just in case a sophisticated defiance rebellion starts.

Your general President Eisenhower warned against a milatary industrial complex that gets out of hand.

What motivation would the NSA or CIA have to create an anonymous, decentralized digital currency?

Yeah, sure it could be CIA but isn't it more likely that someone figured out how to use their (NSAs) methods by backdooring bitcoin to potentially make a fortune?

Actually lots. If the dollar is indeed on weak ground, it makes sense for them to have control over the next world reserve currency. They would prefer it be their own creation, rather than Chinese RMB or some other rival.
If the NSA/CIA did create Bitcoin, they are in  control over the initial 1 million bitcoins. Not bad, is it?

Alright, I see a lot of banter back and forth with zero proof other than "his name may be loosely translated to 'Central Intelligence' in English."

LOLMAO. That made me crack. How did everyone miss that? Like when they said Al Qaeda can be loosely translated to el CIAda

I'm sorry, but I couldn't even read the whole thing through without laughing. THe CIA/NSA is working for the US government who is trying to eliminate Bitcoin. It competes with their banking system and current economy, so why would the CIA/NSA invent something that is competition? They wouldn't. 

That's not what Ben Bernanke (or however you spell his name) said on record. The chairman of the FED Reserve.

And here the proof in case you're wondering: It's in the first line of the article: http://qz.com/148399/ben-bernanke-bitcoin-may-hold-long-term-promise/

Now that ties in quite snug with the overall theory, which doesn't make it outlandish after all.

bullshit I dont believe a shit about this because if it's open source how could they possibly control it?  For 100% this coin isn't an cia/nsa or any other company project.

eff that. Let's just speculate. Life is just more fun that way!!! Anyone got a meme to share?  :D

It could be moreso a test of the technology, and something they would want to implement in the future to TRACK peoples purchases.  It doesnt seem too far fetched, given how obsessed the US is with surveilance (they were even spying on their French "allies", some very high ups!)

I think that whoever Satoshi Nakamoto is or was could be a group, who knows ?
just thanks be to him/they/ for this awesome Bitcoin

Could definitely be.

He could be working for either of those two government organizations but I highly doubt it.  If he is I would have to take my hat off in honor of one of the most well thought out operations I have ever known of.  :D

One thing is for sure. Bitcoin is being clamped down on. In a major way. Coinbase just recently now requires under the FinCEN deal that you provide government issued ID; in addition to all the previous "requirements" which require a "wait" period now while they "background check" the ID provided.

Simply put without a doubt Bitcoin is going to become a lot more regulated... which may in fact drive up the price. People who hold bitcoins, knowing that in order to--- in the future buy more bitcoins--- will only be able to do so "on the books".... create a bit of a "hoarding" scenario.

The code is open-source who initially wrote it doesn't matter. what matters is how well the tech works, what properties it has, and how it evolves from here

Well the tech works now basically like it did back when the first few 100 blocks were mined. Not much has changed protocol wise.

Altcoins have certainly expanded the protocol into all sorts of uses; but the Bitcoin protocol has remained static.

Conspiracy theories can be fun to think about, but How exactly would the NSA/CIA government etc got benefit from this?

This shouldn't be a surprise. There's no way the governments and authorities were just going to sit back and let people launder money through bitcoins and avoid paying taxes. Regulations shouldn't be feared but be seen as a part of the natural evolution of bitcoin going mainstream.

I like your optimism but either you are joking or you are a dreamer. Bitcoin is not the ultimate cure for humanity flaws and problems.
In fact bitcoin could be shut down quite easily, even decentralized nature of BTC could not help it when government decide to stop bitcoin revolution.
Imposing regulation which destroy bitcoin economy will be quite easy - all gov needs to do is regulate ASIC manufacturing.

Whoever made Bitcoin, or why, is completely irrelevant. Bitcoin is open source, and clearly documented, and everybody can verify that it does what it's supposed to do

That's actually right, tho. But it's would be a pleasure to meet the creator of Bitcoin 8)

I am whatever you say I am,
If I wasn't then why would I say I am?

God the title of the thread caught my attention so much, is actually pretty interesting and it could make has a movie a rough coder goes against the government to create a financial revolution.

https://i.imgur.com/FQpiRkp.jpg

Yes, (s)he could be. Would it matter? NO, NOT AT ALL. Nobody cares if he was just a lone genius, or CIA or NSA or Spetsnaz or North Korea's Great Supreme Leader Kim Jung Un himself.

Since Bitcoin is open source, we all know what is being hashed. And thus, with absolute positive 100% certainty, we know it's not password hashes.

What miners are calculating is hashes of hashes of merkle roots (=pseudorandom hashes on data that is influenced by everybody, and nobody has control over) plus an increasing random number (nonce) that is controlled by individual miners. So this has exactly nothing to do with password hashes.

thanks for the explanation doc.