Bitcoin Forum

This question is arising in my mind after i did some research.
What will happen if someone brute Force Private keys in Base58 Format ?

And he succeeds then I think he will get admin access to all the wallets and can ruin the Bitcoin.
I know it's very hard to go through the database but It's not impossible either.

Tell me what you guys think about this.

I think accessing private keys of all bitcoin address is quite impossible as to access private key of even one bitcoin address will take lots of computing power and very long time may be even a lifetime period. There is some fear regarding supercomputers and quantum computers which are still a dream and yet to find actual working prototype so i don't think this is possible and will be possible even for next decades.

That will not happen from night to day, we will see it coming with years or even decades in advance, things can be changed for when such event to occur.

I didn't meant for a single Address
I meant he generate all the private keys which are possible and then search them using the addresses .
Isn't that correct

It has already been done here: http://directory.io ;)

it would not be wrong to say that a thing is impossible if or anyone we want to do .
so there is risk which can be done by  stealing data to loss our money .

I think this basically answers OP's questions. Just look at that database and the ridiculous number of pages (904625697166532776746648320380374280100293470930272690489102837043110636675). Do you think it would be easy to search for a certain address that you want to hack in that big database? No. I think it would take years or even decades before you can even hack a Bitcoin address using that database unless you got lucky and found the address that you were looking for at the top part of that list.

Maybe if someone designs a killer searching algorithm that will let you go through that much number in such short period of time, then we're all doomed.

I found this article directory.io is fake. https://m.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ruk0z/dont_panic_directoryio_thing_is_fake/  (https://m.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ruk0z/dont_panic_directoryio_thing_is_fake/). Is this true?.

what do you mean by brute force?

if you think someone can find private key from public key then it is impossible.

but if you are thinking about brute forcing an encrypted private key, then it depends on the encryption method that was used and the password used for that encryption so it can be possible or impossible depending on what I said.


it is possible but it takes until the end of time to generate a small portion of total private keys.

Let's consider for a moment that the FBI, NSA and all powerful government agencies has a lot of computing power and are able to bruteforce passwords made of very strong encryption. No matter how much computing power these agencies have, they cannot bruteforce more than a few private keys and for this they will take maybe 20-50 years on an optimistic note. Because private keys are random combination it is very very hard to bruteforce them.

So in the end I can say 100% sure that for the moment we are very safe from this point of view, who knows what happens in the future.

Yup that's what i said it is not impossible to get Public key of a wallet you don't own.
What if someone got lucky and went onto a page and found a public key with 100+ BTC on it  :o
Then i think the owner of that address will think that Bitcoin addresses can get hacked and their trust from the system might fade away.
Am i wrong ?

yes you are wrong because it is all about the chance of something like that happening or not. let me give you example.

we all know the chances of getting hit by a meteor when you walk out of your house. so what you say here is like some random guy getting out of his house gets hit by a meteor twice and then loses faith in the world :)

somehow i don't think that is possible to break someone address by brute force, its going to take very very long time to do it, and the success chances for cracking someone address is really slim, but it is not impossible, that is why we don't recommended to put many coins in a wallet

to get private key of a known public key it would take many days to get the exact match. take all 26 alphabets and all 10 numbers and you would millions of string so it's not a cup of tea for everyone.

but luckily if you could find the private key by brute force and you found 0btc so what's the use.

regardless to OP story when the one who brute force succeed and taking over all addresses on bitcoin's world,however the one who doing bruteforce would be depressed trying to take over all the addresses but none of his attempts succeed

yes that is right to say that every thing is possible in this world but i think we have no other choice except to take risk and only then we can make money other wise we can only save our money at home and cannot increase it.

if anyone getting profit in legit way than he will not do scam .
since it is a matter of chance that no one knows the admin of main block of mining .
but i will say all things in this are safe and reliable .

IIRC there are 2^160 possible addresses. So 2^160 private keys.
Even with the current market, we didn't even use 0.01% of it(no research here, it's just obvious that we didn't generate that many addresses), so brute forcing would be stupid or a lucky strike.

The keyspace of the possible Bitcoin address is extremely huge and it makes it IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to even get an used Bitcoin address in their entire lifetime. This is possible if the address generation is not random and thus making the address weak.

The closest thing that you can get to have control over several addresses at once is trying to crack the xpriv keys and that is also impossible. That would grant you access to all the addresses that can be generated under that.

ok lets worse case scenario this.

lets imagine all possible private keys at binary level
from
00000000-00000000-00000000-00000000-00000000-00000000-00000000-00000000-00000000-00000000-00000000-00000000-00000000-00000000-
00000000-00000000-00000000-00000000-00000000-00000000
to
11111111-11111111-11111111-11111111-11111111-11111111-11111111-11111111-11111111-11111111-11111111-11111111-11111111-11111111-
11111111-11111111-11111111-11111111-11111111-11111111

you may think that 20 bytes looks small but its not the case of changing a bit 160 times. its instead progressively more changes as you go through it.

EG lets start with 3 bits its not
000   001   011   111   done
its
000   001   010   011   100   101   110   111   done

adding another bit is not just one extra change, but double
0000   0001   0010   0011   0100   0101   0110   0111  1000   1001   1010   1011   1100   1101   1110   1111   done
another bit, again double

even with the 160bit limitations it is 1461501637330900000000000000000000000000000000000 combinations
imagine you processed 1000 combinations a second
thats only 31536000000 combinations a year.
meaning you will process all combinations in
46343912903694300000000000000000000000 years

lets say you could do 1trillian combinations a second
thats only 31536000000000000000 combinations a year.
meaning you will process all combinations in
46343912903694300000000000000 years


remember a person only lives ~99 years and has become a grandparent (3rd generation) in that time
so to get to 999 years your descendants need to hand your project down the lineage of offspring 20 times
the next digit (9,999 years) is passing it down your lineage 4000 times
the next digit (99,999 years) is passing it down your lineage 80000 times
in short even if a caveman done 1trillian combinations a second, their modern day ancestor would not have got that far.

You didn't got me did you ?
I meant if someone gets the database by brute force like " http://directory.io "

Then he can Search the database like he's searching Note pad and can easily find a particular Private key of an address.

For Example a website is giving facility to find your address on " http://directory.io " With your Private key.

It's " https://bitcoin-checker.appspot.com/ "

What will happen if Instead of Private key it search the website ( http://directory.io ) with Bitcoin Address and trace Private key ?

Its vulnerable if it hits by trojan or keylogger

Your problem is that you think directory[dot]io is a database. well it is not a database.

It is a very simple code that generates private keys on the go. Which means when you click on a page it generates private keys based on the number of the page you are in.

And also it is because you are seeing the private keys in WIF format (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Wallet_import_format) which makes you confused. In fact the first page of directory[dot]io looks like this:
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 : 5HpHagT65TZzG1PH3CSu63k8DbpvD8s5ip4nEB3kEsreAnchuDf  
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002 : 5HpHagT65TZzG1PH3CSu63k8DbpvD8s5ip4nEB3kEsreAvUcVfH  
and so on. It starts from value 1 and goes up from there.

You can easily make a code yourself and start creating private keys based on 1 to 1,000,000,...........


This site will steal your private keys. It does not search
You would be a fool to go here an insert your private keys to check. Because sites like this don't search with bitcoin address (pubkey) but with private key instead in other words you enter your private key and they empty it for you :D

Take a look at the bot of the page you will find " It took a lot of computing power to generate this database. "
Think again dude.

its not a database. the webmaster put that there as a scare tactic/prank to make people things its a searchable database.
its not.

but anyway. feel free to spend the rest of your life, your great great great great great great great great great great great grand childrens lives
trying to search it.

I tried to explain it the best I can so if you want to ignore facts and believe it is a "database" when it clearly IS NOT that would be your choice.

I may like technology but I am not as tech-savvy as those guys (and girls) who develop Bitcoin. However, if there is really a vulnerability in the Bitcoin system, I do not think these tech-savvy people will still continue to develop Bitcoin.

i think no bitcoin is like money right its money from the internet that we are using too but if we are going to convert it into fiat then it more be realistic because of some activities that we are going to do and i think in this bitcoin wallet are vulnerable into ddos attack and thats all.

that website is a scam.
it asks for people to put their private keys in.. (literally stealing any funds stored as soon as you hit submit)
it does not check any database (because there is no database)

it does not even ask for a public key.
it is just a private key funds stealer.. dont try it.

note
it has now become obvious why the OP started this topic. he wanted to play dumb thinking noobs will then be scared enough to reveal their private keys by typing them into his "checker".(stealer)

bait. directory.io.... switch privkey stealer..
nice try but epic fail

never hand a private key over to anyone.

directory.io is like a bad joke from at least 4-5 years ago and every couple of months i see a new user around here saying the same thing (this time it is Full Member).

* if you have some small amount of bitcoin knowledge you can see how wrong you are

* if you don't have that, but if you are not too lazy to search you can find out how wrong your are again (this question has been asked a thousand times and explained 10 thousand times)

* if you don't want to use any of the above, then if you have a brain do some calculations: this site was created a long time ago, if it really contained all the private keys don't you think people have emptied each other wallets a million times by now?!!!!

Maybe in the future, supercomputers can crack something, if one isn't enough, you can put 10-100 working togheter... But why? Just to prove it? Because if they stolen all bitcoin, it will still have value? I don't think so.

Bitcoin greatest vulnerability

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1516755.msg15262075;topicseen#msg15262075

"easily"? I don't think you really want to use that word when searching for a particular address in the entire Bitcoin addresses possible. If that can "easily" be done, then people would just be stealing Bitcoins away from each other. Explore the directory.io a little and you'll see the amount of Bitcoin addresses that is in there.

Do you honestly think if you press CTRL + F in your notepad, you can easily see a particular address? That's a lot of waiting to do, your computer might even overheat just because of that. Even just importing all the info in directory.io into a .txt file would take some time even if you're using a certain script to do the work.

Quantum Computers will cause the demise of Bitcoin. That's my fear.  

I know it's not easy even if you use script because there are more than billions of pages with more than 50 Address per page.
I also know this if it's that easy then everyone will steal btc from one another.

Comprehensive knowledge about bitcoin indeed, bitcoin system is theoretically proven secure and safe, reliable system, so at least in our age, we won't see it collapse.

Consider the size of a database necessary to do what you suggest, i.e search for private key based on bitcoin address.

A minimum-sized database would simply be a list of private keys -- one for each bitcoin address. This database would require 32 bytes per bitcoin address, and there are 2¹⁶⁰ addresses, so the database would have to be at least 2¹⁶⁵ bytes in size.

How big is 2¹⁶⁵ bytes?

According to this article in 2011:

295 exabytes is about 2⁶⁸ bytes, so a database with 2¹⁶⁵ bytes would be 2⁹⁷ (about 160,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) times the current storage capacity of the entire world.


How long would it take to generate this database?

First, you need to generate addresses for at least 2¹⁶⁰ private keys to generate the entire database. Let's use that number to simplify things.

A top-of-the-line PC can generate nearly 64 million (2²⁶) addresses per second (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Vanitygen#Expected_keysearch_rate). At that rate it would take about 2¹³⁴ seconds, or 6.9x10³⁰ (6,900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) centuries to generate the database. There are about 2 billion PCs in the world (https://www.reference.com/technology/many-computers-world-e2e980daa5e128d0). If every PC in the world was a top-of-the-line PC and was working on this database, then you could cut it down to only 3,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 centuries.

Go for it!

At the moment there is no 100% "malware proof" system so I guess Bitcoin system is vulnerable too. The question is how.much is realy vulnerable and how likely is for something like this to happen. Having in mind the Bitcoin system structure there is no much chance for such security breach, at least not at the moment.

Brute Forcing Base58 ? What is the probability of that happening as a successful attack ? There goes a failed one,followed by many https://github.com/Marclass/BritExploit/blob/master/src/bruteForcer/BruteForce.java

This dude has put it in brief,most simple and to the point information I found so far

http://blog.richardkiss.com/?p=371

That is absurd.There is literally no specific database as such.Bitcoin wouldn't be as successful if they put it all in a static database. 

everything is possible to do, there just isnt a person alive with the time left to do it, and there never will be. ;D

we should never think of bitcoin as indestructible otherwise people get lazy and dont continue protecting it.
EG one:
it only requires a hacker to use bitnodes website to find all IP addresses of all ~5200 nodes and some possible DDoS/virus tool to delete the historic data before taking them offline all in one swoop.

the chances of that being possible is low. but we should not think ~5200 nodes is a safe secure number to live with. we need more nodes to further reduce risks

EG two:
if all ~5200 nodes were running the code of one implementation, and that implementation has a bug/intentional trojan. again the whole lot goes.

the chances of that being possible is low. but we should not think one implementation is safe to live with. we need more diversity to further reduce risks.


quantum computers work differently. and can do some surprising things that binary(regular) computers cant.
but getting a QC to solve a binary computer. restrains QC into certain limitations. which only results in a QC beign 2x efficient in comparison to regular computers when it comes to solving binary logic. ASICS and the amount of ASIC running has already averted the risk QC can pose.
so relax. D-waves QC may be technically faster then many regular computers but is no way near the power of an asic, and no way near the power of all the asics mining bitcoin.

but we should continue increasing the difficulty and adding more ASICS to continue strengthening bitcoin so that other technology cannot overtake in the distant future

I don't know, I have bit afraid about quantum computers, because they can solve in theory things very fast compared than normal computers and the cryptography is little weak in this position.

I hope this problem is fixed,before quantum computers be a reality.

You can't stop someone from brute forcing a private key, similar to how you can't stop someone from brute forcing a password (aside from using something like a captcha). I don't believe that anyone will ever get admin access to all of the wallets.

Personally, I don't worry about anything like that. It just isn't enough of a threat right now.

quantum computers are process for process a couple tousand times better at some solutions compared to binary computers.
quantum can solve non binary problems faster. because they are not binary logic. and normal computer have issues with non binary logic problems.

but when a quantum has to handle a binary logic problem. it limits quantum to the scope of binary logic and so the effectiveness and efficiency is not 100%

so relax.

The only issue I can see with Bitcoin security is going to be quantum computers in the future, and even that is a fairly long ways away at the rate things are going. OP, there is no way to stop someone trying to brute force your key. It will take them a lot of time and chances are you won't get your key stolen.

there is not impossible for anything in this world even for bitcoin itself. but i think its really need more times to be hacking bitcoin and its need big resource and capability, beside that we should have excellent in programming language.

i really don't know what will happen if bitcoin gets hack because i am not understand about programming language. i only know about how to make money with bitcoin.

I don't think it's that easy to take control all the wallet. We have seen some sites were hacked, but it doesn't mean that all the private key can be hacked so easy as well. in other hand we know that many secure ways to make your private keys secure, so I think to get all people's private keys is difficult.

I think Bitcoin system have vulnerabilities, but it is unexploitable at this time due to the limited technology.  There are theories about the quantum computer being able to crack hashes of bitcoin but as far as I know as technology develop, so as the security around it.  It may be possible for quantum computers to crack bitcoin private key at this current bitcoin state but when time came that quantum computers are available, bitcoin security would have upgraded by that time.

By their explanations, you can see that Satoshi is a genius.
Don't worry, mate. Your money is safe here.
Just be cautious on what wallet you are using.

Yes it's true that until we live we will not see all the private keys being revealed.
How ever if someone gets lucky and generate a Private key of address with 1000+ BTC
Then i think it's only his luck not the exploit of the system.

nope i think bitcoin system has been very good and safe if you're clever in securing your bitcoin in a wallet. you will never be stolen
and I have never felt my bitcoin stolen

After that long and deep analyzation, technical aspects, mathematical equations, fearless explanation, thrilling guessed outputs etc. I wondered if there's a person or a group will give super efforts in that kind of hacking activity?

I mean they can think instead to force hack an exchange site rather than whole bitcoin system just to get control of all bitcoins in the world?

If people can use Bitcoins to sell drugs ,illegal Stuff , etc
then i am sure there might be some groups who are potentially trying to hack the exchange website of Bitcoins.
Take the example of Bitfinex Funds Stolen https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1573336.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1573336.0)

Take a look.

Is bitcoin System Vulnerable? Well, when we say vulnerable, it means if it is open to attack or harm. Harm in terms of hackers, but as far as i know it is strong , why? If bitcoin is not strong then maybe from the past years, it already hacked by hackers but it wasn't done because it is strong. And now it become more progressive and it is safe if you trust it.  :)

every piece if 1's and 0's are vulnerable but we should find out. fort there is no loop hole found in bitcoin system. and it's not fixed that bitcoin system will remain unvulnerable. someday it might get hacked but we don't know what's going to happen next.

We can't say if the system is vulnerable or not, so we just have to hope that no one will attempt to destroy its security or else, everything will be a waste. All of the earnings and investments will be futile.

I loved posts of Franky in this thread. As always he debunked myths that bitcoin can be hacked with our current tech.

---

That is not possible.
But if hypothetically speaking; if someone will find a way to break bitcoin encryption methods and hack address/private keys or gain access to whole network somehow.
Then how long it would take for bitcoin to crash completely and thus making it worthless?

Yes it is possible but given the amount of time it will take,I doubt anyone will even consider to give it a try

Still not. If it was vulnerable then hackers could have taken all the money. But it doesn't meant that it would remain safe life long. At anytime hacker could destroy the network but it's less likely to happen.

It is not.

If it were, it wouldn't have existed till now.

yes i agree but times goes by and it became more powerful and will search for the backdoor instead and vulnerabilities will appear.  so this means that they have to strengthen the security time by time so it will not compromise

If you are saying that no one will going to consider to give it a try then why are you saying that the bitcoin system or network is vulnerable.

And it means that the network is possible to be hacked by someone, I don't know if you are on both sides or you are completely saying a no.

Because for me, that is a big no.

I don't think that bitcoin sysmtem is vulnerable those private keys etc . Because if bitcoin system is not safe then bitcoin should be died today but those bitcoin wallet is vulnerable and not the bitcoin :) i don't think so that bitcoin will be died also.

if it had happene bitcoin would already be dead. if someone could do it they would render their theft worthless.

anything is theoretically possible. the likelihood is more important and that stands somewhere around nil.

Bitcoin system vulnerable, yes this is possible. I guess the  biggest
risk for bitcoin is end user security, and the biggest challenge is for
end users to take the security of bitcoins seriously. People are used
to the financial sector being able to restore access to bank accounts
in case credentials get lost - with bitcoin there is no one who can do this.

It is not. Should this question be raised? Anyone being in this forum and know all about bitcoins would not post such. We all wont support if this is the case then and it would have not reached this stage. This has reached its height. The thread is just opposite to what bitcoin really is. Its goodness has made unemployed employed. Has made many rich and changed their lives a lot. Lot can be talked upon bitcoins. It's driven on a right and good path by everyone in this forum.  This value is really spoken upon.

No system is ever created perfect, and such vulnerabilities and flaws exist. Bitcoin is also not perfect; you can create double spend tx given the right condition, create a 51% attack that would fork the whole chain and create confusion among others. It's just that there aren't sufficient time, resources and efforts for these attacks to be sustained or prolong that can damage the whole network.

It should not be and none expects this to turn as a vulnerable site. This is serving a lot to many. We all aim to earn bitcoins. This never directed to harm anybody or anything. The system is secured and developed in such a way that its easy to handle and learn more. The features are set up friendly as well. None of these would make anyone think to do something vulnerable.

The bank system is also vulnerable, but no matter that the whole people in the world uses banking services.

This exact and true. Every system goes from experimental to beta to live and even then there will be room for improvement.
Just look at Microsoft. After windows 95 they made so many new version and even Windows 10 can't be called really stable.

Windows 10 is a pain in the ass because of the shitty updates they have every now and then. As for bitcoin, it doesn't have those annoying attack vectors and loopholes so far, but as the system is up and running, people would try to find something in the code just to use it to their advantage. But no worries, developers are working hard to strengthen the security of the System.