Bitcoin Forum

Do you think the NSA has ASIC chips designed for brute-forcing SHA-256? If so, what do you think their hashrate would be if they put all of their resources behind a 51% attack on the blockchain?

The NSA has ample reason outside to of Bitcoin to have and operate specialized hardware and software for the various SHA algorithms, especially since they were the ones who designed the algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2). In my mind, the only question is how much hashing power they actually have & for how long they would have a majority stake to attack Bitcoin.

gosh, the NSA? They have so many computers and secret algorithms, I bet they could do like a billion hashes a second!

No need to troll, it's an honest question. You don't think the NSA would have SHA-256 specific equipment? I don't think they are an all powerful boogie man, but they are competent mathematicians / cryptographers.

I'd imagine they would be pouring money into quantum computers rather than traditional devices.

You mean..1 GH/s?

Likely not, they have different problems and objectives.


Their main goal at the moment is real time control and surveillance of the web. Consider the hashing power you would need to take over teh web. That would be idiotic. Rather than that, they are far more likely to take the amount of money, create many fake identities and start crashing the exchanges. They work on a budget and have a ton of really smart people. Designing ASIC hashing power with the SHA2 Algorhithm would be like throwing money away for them. And their "regular" supercomputers are not ASICs. They are farms consisting of obscene numbers of EM64T intel chips.

The NSA has a very specific but at the same time broad mission, which a CPU based supercomputer design and the development of quantum computing fits far more than using ASICs to crush a world wide network.

The NSA, if you will, would probably rather develop a form of sniffing technology that matches adresses and creates user profiles. It should be impossible, but remember, Bitcoin is pseudonymous. Instead of crushing the network, it would be far more useful to peek into the blockchain with a suitable method of pattern identification. And that is something I can almost guarantee they are working on.

I'm sure they're busy cracking encryption trying to read suspected terrorists' emails.

Considering the market, they would most likely work on ASICs for AES, not SHA2.

lol

The NSA doesn't need to brute force mine bitcoins so their hashrate doesn't matter.

They have likely cracked SHA2 (SHA-256) which is used in bitcoin because they are decades ahead of the public when it comes to cryptanalysis.

So if they would like to create a new block they can just create one that hashes to the chosen value no matter what the current difficult and without brute forcing anything.

Actually, they are not. They use pretty much open standards, such as AES.

If you look at these standards, you will find quickly that although attacks have been suggested, these standards are top level. Once the NSA gets close to cracking their own standards, you will usually see a competition held for the next great Algorithm ;)

The NSA doesn't want people to know what they can and they can not do. They can use AES themselves because they know no other government can crack it. But it doesn't mean they can't crack SHA2 or anything else we use. They like people to use standards they can crack.

Many of the smartest mathematicians I knew from college went to work for the NSA. They have a monopoly on the crypto brains in the world and the most prestigious academic research done isn't even the same league as what goes on in the NSA.

There is already a thread on this where most relevant questions were discussed.

Cliffnotes: The NSA has a lot more important shit to worry about than a cryptocoin with 1B market cap.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=194641.0

the NSA created SHA-256 about thirteen years ago, so, yes I do believe they have application specific hardware that can solve that algorithm

there is nothing high-tech or revolutionary about single purpose CPUs. the arms race in processing has always been around general purpose processing.

Hint: Satoshi Nakamoto... or shall I say, Nakamoto Satoshi, is NSA.  ;)

To be honest, intelligence agencies (the three-letter acronyms) are probably more interested in bitcoin surviving. If anyone recalled Gavin's invitation to the CIA, and the subsequent interest in BTC as an "untraceable" funding mechanism for agents in other countries...

Thanks for link. My thread came first though :-P.

Anyway, market cap is somewhat relevant, but somewhat irrelevant, to the discussion. I don't think that the NSA has 10+ people working on monitoring and coming up with ways to undermine Bitcoin 24/7. However, an organization that big can afford to spend some man-hours coming up with contingency plans in case the Feds decide to take it down.

They can't read their own email without this massive computational power??? ;)

1 billion per second is only 1 GH/s

not in the long scale

if terrorists are still using crackable encryption, they deserve to be caught.

Yeah. I use RSA 4096 for my "how's a movie on Saturday sound" emails.