Bitcoin Forum

Was thinking the other night about odd or interesting ways to generate keys and came up with this idea:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3re0au/use_any_picture_as_your_bitcoin_wallet_in_a_few/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3re0au/use_any_picture_as_your_bitcoin_wallet_in_a_few/)

Here is a sample of what one looks like after the conversion.  Its a pretty popular bitcoin google search image.

http://i68.tinypic.com/2rpsft3.png

What do you guys think?


Edited to add straight link to our blog:
http://www.mycryptovault.net/blogs/news/75839620-create-a-bitcoin-wallet-from-a-picture (http://www.mycryptovault.net/blogs/news/75839620-create-a-bitcoin-wallet-from-a-picture)

does it work?

Yeah, I have it working.  Tried to recreate using the same image and came up with the same 8x8 16 color image.  You just have to be careful and take your time when matching the colors in the image to the colors on the key.  And also be careful when entering the finished hex sequence into bitaddress.org so you dont have any typos.

I think it may be a bit risky... a bit change in contrast/saturation of the picture might give you a totally different address... The only picture I trust is the QR code- it is well validated and with error correction capability!

Original idea but looks pretty convoluted to me. Why not just take a sha256sum of the image file to obtain the hex privkey?

Probably because the hash will change if the image is ever re-encoded, even if the pixel data remains unchanged.

How rebust is it? How many pixels can change until you no longet get the same key?

Yeah. This doesn't really seem so safe to me. As soon as you change it a bit, you could completely lose your Bitcoin wallet. The idea seems pretty cool and all, but to make this work would be quite hard. Also, you can just use a QR code instead of this weird image. I'm sorry to say this but I doubt that this will work.

Posted that idea on here about 2 years ago.

Wouldn't this system open the door for bruteforcing? You know some stupid people will actually use a popular image (like an image of their kids, probably an image that can be found on their facebook profile).

The technical idear is really cool tough  :)

Yes, defiantly able to be brute forced if any anyone used an online pic.

Not sure how much change is required in the original picture to cause a change in pixel color to the 8x8.  I guess it depends on the size of the original.

This definitely wasn't meant for people to go put all their bitcoins on, more of a proof of concept.

We got featured in a video!!!  Skip to 5:00 if you are short on time lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0BQVqeSy3A (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0BQVqeSy3A)

Don't forget to tweet it for some grassroots marketing!

I like this idea, as people have said it isn't the most secure but it is a bit of fun. Of course you need to keep the original image you used and colour key safe aswell!

I wonder where would be a great place to store the color key?  If only there was a small metal device i could secure it too  ;)

Exactly my thought! It's very neat but I wouldn't feel comfortable hiting the send button without double checking the actual letter address. A color bit darker or a bit lighter and your coins are gone for good!

Even when I send by scanning a QR code, I double check the actual address by glancing over it!

Just check the first and last few digits and letters of the address. You should be able to quickly verify if it is correct or not.

Maybe for small transactions it wouldn't matter too much, but larger ones definately.

I see a market coming btw with people hosting slicht color changed images like that to lure people in to send funds to them.