Bitcoin Forum

Is it possible that all current blockchain-based cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin) can be hacked in just a matter of seconds? It indeed seems possible, based on the statements made by Dr. Joseph Liu, Associate Professor at Monash University.

Dr. Liu’s qualifications add allot of weight to his statements. He is the Head Researcher at Monash Blockchain Research Lab, the Chief Scientist of HCash and he is also the co-creator of the Moreno cryptocurrency. In other words, his statements about cryptocurrency development should be taken seriously...

https://www.bitcrypt.co/every-cryptocurrency-hacked-in-seconds/

Yeah, it's true. If only we have a quantum computer laying around that capable to be used to hack those cryptocurrencies lol. Anyway you can read this article too just so you can have another point of view for this matter

It's a pretty old debate! No one really knows what exactly will happens if quantum computing becomes a reality (IBM already implemented one but with restricted usage), these are just assumptions! Even if I consider that quantum computer will hack into any crypto algorithms, there will be new kind of algorithms available to prevent such mishaps. There are several theoretical ways to do that and Dr. Liu himself suggested one of those, dual chain system!

Google it and you will find different articles on the same topic. I can recomment at least one for you,

https://hackernoon.com/quantum-computing-can-blockchain-be-hacked-19c2ec7bac85

I just type "do quantum computers a threat to bitcoin" and there like About 854,000 results show up. So this just like @avikz says, it's an old debate and we should not repeat it over and over again. We never know what quantum computer capable of cause we don't have one. it's not like a regular computer you can buy of the store right?

But you not really care about all that don't you? Cause you just want to gain more traffic to your website and gain that sweet ad revenue, can't even look at the article without turn my adblock of.

1. Today's quantum computers are so unstable that even the tiniest vibration can make the results invalid.
2. If quantum computing will ever become usable for real, many other fields are in big trouble, including the banking (a small example is internet banking).

It's true, with coins like Monero, a hacker would not know which address should hack for more money.
On the other hand, on Bitcoin network nobody stops the owners of the fattest wallets split their content into 1000s of small wallets. What then?

Not because someone stupid tells you means it is truthful
If that article is true.then maybe all of our cryptos are gone by now?are you using commonsense?or you are just believing in hearsay?
Even CIA can’t hack crypto just like that so better find some truthful storys than this old debate

Dr. Joseph Liu is thinking way far ahead of our time when he said those statement. In our current time, it is impossible to hack any cryptocurrency or even its wallet. Even in the next 50 years or so, it will still be impossible to do the task.

Jeebus. If we already have stable and reliable quantum computer that could constantly attack and potentially crack bitcoin, then mate, we have far bigger problems than bitcoin being "hacked".

Everything on the internet is hackable now that we're on the generation of advanced technology. Exchanges and wallets are hackable so losing our cryptocurrency is possible. That's why we have to do something to protect our holdings a funds. I think securing it in a hard wallet would be an advantage.

I have no ideas how quantum computer will be able to hack any cryptos in a matter of seconds only. If this will be truth then there will be no more people using the internet and computer for something that related to money including e-commerce but I believe if it will be true then there will be someone or group of people who create something to fight against this possibility.

Quantum computing could arguable do something like that, but right now we don't know how to use it effectively for normal computing, let alone cryptographic cracking. Quantum computing would basically be breaking any kind of encryption anyway, so there are much more concerning aspects to it than what would happen to Bitcoin and cryptos.

As for what can be done about it, well, we need to find a way to get consumer quantum processors so that we can see what it is capable of. Then we think about what it can't do and exploit that as the basis for a new form of cryptography, and, if necessary, apply it to Bitcoin.

None have been hacked yet. The weak point has always been the exchanges, or people being phished.

there is nothing that is impossible, is it not man that invented all this? what if the all come together and decide to freeze it. but i believe it wont just happen like that for no reason.since it is not a ponzi scheme, there should be a signal across atleast for the sake of integrity.

If its possible the banks that can spend billions to create quantum computers would probably spend billions to crack all these cryptocurrencies. Unfortunately they might not be able to successful do it. Blockchain is almost impossible to hack. There are literally millions of wallet running which everyone had downloaded the blockchain on their computer. Do they mean to hack each?

We may have created a single prototype for a quantum computer but we are millions of miles away from a working one that can break the algorithms involved in cryptocurrencies. 'Hacked in seconds' is an overstatement, and we know that we would need to employ a large computing power just to satisfy that phrase and for it to come into realization. Until then, that phrase claimed by Dr. Liu holds no weight until a working model is crafted, or is observed by people who knows what the capacity of the blockchains and cryptocurrencies are.

The answer to the question is not really obvious. Firstly, as stated in this (https://hackernoon.com/quantum-computing-can-blockchain-be-hacked-19c2ec7bac85) article,
The progress might seem fast for now, just like people in the late 60x were pretty sure about us traveling casually to nearby planets from time to time at the beginning of the 21st century, and yet here we are, still as far away from the goal as ever. There might be something similar awaiting in the future of quantum computers. Moreover, as the article also rightfully mentions, some cryptos are already quantum resistant while others have some interesting methods of preventing being cracked (using addresses only once).

As the saying goes anything can be hackable and security is only as tight as one can possibly make it.
If it was made by human creativity then it can be undone by another human who wants to take it apart.
The only thing which can be a saving force would be current updates being applied to those blockchains sustaining the security from them of being disrupted.

Actually, there are currently quantum computers that are available for military and academic purposes, now that I think about it. They are pretty expensive, however, and the amount of time you can spend on a quantum computer, in seconds, has a price which is measured in dollars. It's impressive that they have some semi-working models right now, but as you say, they're a long ways away from being an effective means of breaking the cryptography used in cryptocurrencies. It's good news for us, since we don't have to be worried about crypto being broken anytime soon. Ideally, anyway. I think there are less than a dozen quantum processors that currently exist, and at least one of them is very prototypical (which was a google processor from a few years back). Anything for common use should be at least a decade away.

Everything? I don't think so. Quantum computers in their current state(Prototypes) cannot cause any sort of damage to crypto while powerful fully functional quantum computers could do something, but the crypto algorithms would be updated by then to ensure high security in such situations.

Saying everything on the Internet is hackable is a dumb statement. Some things are hackable while some stuff is impossible to hack.

Same time you cannot assure with this statement. Hack is same as a learning to evade cracking the ways. I believe everything is hackable, however a small error can make a big change. One such took place recently when a large sum of ethereum funds got frozen. It wasn't able to read, but later a small boy released the entire funds with his knowledge into reverse engineering.

There is no computer program on this earth which can not be hacked. But blockchain based cryptocurrencies are only vulnerable to hacking when users of these cryptocurrencies make it easier by sharing their private keys and other personal details of their wallet with other people.  Most of the people who are highly vulnerable to hacking are those who just log in into any websites without first analysing the website before inputting in their account details.

Yes I believe that every cryptocurrency can be hacked in just few seconds or in just blink of your eye. Remember that we are in the digital world and nothing is impossible to do. So we need to be careful on we are browsing because most of hacking strategies are find you in ever unknown site. Make sure that you did not share your private keys.

Haha yeah, if the worst thing someone with a quantum computer could do is hack Satoshi's wallet for a million plus bitcoin in a few seconds, then the owner isn't being very creative!

It would be terrible for crypto, but that quantum computer could do a lot more damage elsewhere.

that is not how quantum computers work and i am starting to wonder where do all these so called "experts" come from these days. it still wouldn't be a matter of seconds even if a much more powerful computer was invented and on top of that a much faster algorithm to solve the elliptic curve problem. not to mention that we are decades away from such computers!

If he's going to talk the talk, he should walk it. It's much easier saying that a project is hackable than to actually hack it. Of course, all kinds of theoretical vulnerabilities may exist, such as quantum computing. But if it was so easy to hack bitcoin and other blockchains, it would already be done.

it might be closer to a decade (singular) than multiple decades, if moore's law is any indication. according to this paper, bitcoin's signature algorithm could be broken within 8 years: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.10377.pdf


needless to say, we should probably start planning for this.

I believe that every human's made have vulnerability although they say that one product cannot be hacked but the truth, it will always have the potential to have a bug. But not all people can find that bug if he doesn't have skills to search or scan the bug. That is why we already saw that many exchanges had been hacked so far, but it doesn't mean that we cannot fix the issues because there will be many more people who have a high-skills that could fix the problems.
The quantum computer might be not too popular right now but since it still on the develop, I think in the future, we will going to use the quantum computer because I believe that the better technology will always be invented in every year.

that still wouldn't be a matter of seconds but days. not to mention that it will work only on one public key at a time not the whole system.
i never liked articles that are purely based on data extrapolation though because it makes a ton of assumptions. but i agree that we need to start planning for it. so far the alternative solutions i have seen have never been taken seriously because they weren't as strong and there has never been any serious threat to rush it.

By the time Bitcoin can be hacked, other passwords and logins will have been hacked much earlier. That is, if one day is possible, all the internet and the system of logins in websites, emails, banks etc would have been changed.

And we would have several other implications on thousands of systems. But the advantage of bitcoin is that it is an open source project with thousands of contributors and stakeholders. It is not a closed company. Then an innovative change will be created when there is, in fact, such a risk.

You know, it'll be kind of interesting to see quantum computers follow a similar progression to what we had with the first CPUs. Going from room-sized computing labs to small, box-sized computers with even smaller processors, it'd be cool to see if that'll happen. Maybe we'll find a new branch of computing where quantum processors are run alongside our "standard" CPUs. That'd be cool.

Regardless, the cryptography is still sound. There is nothing close to proof that quantum computing is going to break what we have now. While it's something to think about, it's not a serious issue.

I think we are fine even with the current computing power.
Also why does Dr. Joseph Liu look angry?

I have heard a lot about quantum computers, it is theoretically a threat to bitcoin. But that is only a theory, in fact, to hack crypto systems in seconds is an unbelievable thing, not to mention quantum computing is still a paper-based theory. 

I think the current blockchain is still a very secure system for at least next twenty years. If the quantum computer was born then the blockchain technology would have changed a lot, so it was hard to hack crypto.

do you know if the bitcoin devs have discussed it at all? quantum resistant/one time use signature schemes etc? i don't think it needs to be rushed but it would be good to know what the consensus is among developers.

i'm not too worried personally as i agree, it's still years off by the most optimistic estimates. and we can protect ourselves by storing coins in addresses that have never been used to sign transactions.

it's interesting to think about though. for instance, lots of the early satoshi coins are held on p2pk addresses. those will be stolen eventually. i wonder how much the market will panic when that happens!

I think OP means like what Einstein or some other smart guy said,,, that nothing is impossible, given the correct time and resources. But let us face it, if you give someone 10 million years and all the supercomputers in the world, he maybe can crack a few Bitcoin private keys. But in 5 years for sure Bitcoin security will be upgraded, the hashpower higher, everything. You think it will be easy?

not that much, although i am not really following these things so it doesn't count. i have seen some talks about it on the mailing list (https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2018-February/015715.html).
there was a recent topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5125992.0) in development discussion board with some links in the replies but as others also say, there seems to be no serious discussion about this yet.

It surely not to be easy for them and it takes years to finally crack down Bitcoin keys. I will really get amaze when hackers spend millions just for this, maybe not for sure. Hackers are just around us, they are just waiting for anyone who could be their victim. If we have to be careful of our keys, definitely we are safe( but not a hundred 100%).

When someone hacker has access to the wallet, it is very possible to be able to do hacking against the wallet. So basically that as long as we can keep the wallets we have safely we will get a sense of security too. Take care of all information relating to the wallet and when we use web-based wallets such as exchange, then choose an exchange that does have the best reputation.

Couldn't agree more mate, at this moment we don't need to afraid about some quantum computer that hasn't invented yet. The weakest point of cryptocurrency is the user itself.

LOL, This is just pure rubbish, can be hacked in matter of seconds? And yes this has been put into debates years ago and no one can really tell us if quantum can really break blockchain technology. This article is just for click-bait and promote Ray Ram Thanni Hcash.

everything can happen, but in my opinion the blockchain cannot be cracked by anyone unless people make the chain itself.  So now only the market can be hacked, secure your assets in the hardware wallet

How are they going to achieve this?  I guess the chances of blockchain being takenover/hacked is high with few nodes... They would have to control the majority of the nodes or something?

Well, I guess If this was possible they would have done it since.

Aside we are decades away from the creation of the mentioned computers, the crypto currency market is getting broad day by day and what most of the expert are doing this days is making the public notice them or say some false things about a project which might hinder their own project which is yet to be create just like the JPMorgan does to Bitcoin before the birth of it own stable coin.

As far as I can see this this as just an assumption but seems like no one has ever done this in the past. Yes, it might be possible, especially with the way technology is evolving today but for now it's just a speculation and we'll have to wait until that happens so that we can truly say if this is a problem or not for us. People can say anything about everything but very few are actually proving what they are saying.

First let's get this straight when you mean cryptocurrency cab be hacked. Do you mean either a cryptocurrency exchange, wallet or what?
But no matter what you meant if there a lapses from the technical aspect it can surely be invaded by hackers