Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin users frequently generate new addresses for each transaction they make, which greatly increases the number of bitcoin addresses being used to receive money.

Would it be possible (and profitable) for someone to find collisions in the bitcoin address space in order to steal money?

How many times do we have to tell you? http://lmgtfy.com/?q=is+it+possible+for+a+bitcoin+address+collision+to+happen%3F

No. It is not impossible but the chances are way too low. Its widely known that there is a higher number of addresses (2^160) that could be generated than the grains of sand on earth and you're more likely to be struck by a lightning 10 times while sitting in a toilet bowl for 10+ years in a row, IIRC. You would have better chance winning the lottery a few times for consecutive years than to generate a single collision.

I don't think its possible, if its actually doable then we should have heard about those attempts buy now. Also when you  say bitcoin addresses does it mean public addresses?  I believe in order to steal bitcoins you actually need the private key of a bitcoin wallet, which is almost impossible to obtain by brute force considering the current state of our computational power/technology. However, there are rumors that a quantum computer maybe able to crack a private key and obtain cryptocurrencies in that wallet. I don't know if this has been even attempted at this time where quantum computational technology is at its infancy.

This may be "theoretically" possible, but in fact it is unlikely to be achieved - just as it is possible to calculate the number of atoms in an office building.

"Is it possible to brute force bitcoin address"

 Yes.   This has already been done.

Hash dictionary from password hash can be bought on the dark net. Is it possible that someday a big file of bitcoin dictionary will be created ?

No, it is not possible and it has never been done and RawDog is our local forum troll, so you should take anything he says with a pinch of Salt.  ;D <Hell, sometimes even a bag of salt.>

A bunch of people have generated a websites on the internet, with a so-called database of all Bitcoin addresses <fools> and they telling everyone that there are collisions on the website. This is just a joke.  ;D

If the sole purpose of your question is to steal money then the question that you rise is useless in this furom because we do not advice here how to steal hard earned money of our fellows but if your question is more on the ways of finding how to lessen the different addresses made for wallet then i think the answer is actually: i dont actually see the increase of wallet addresses as problem at all people does this for safety so that they wont get hacked or scammed or get steal which you are implying at the end of your post question.

This dictionary was already created.  It contained 100% of all addresses.  They took it off the internet now.

If we get someone bitcoin address we can do it for what ?
We cannot steal anybody's funds if we only has their address, we have to know the pricate key to access the wallet.
So, addresses is not vital thing.

It's possible but the chance for getting back is really really low because SHA 512 won't be too easy for being hack.
Yes，it's required many decades to break it, right? I'm wondering why some exchange still can get hack

I do not think there could be a transaction collision because there is a blockchain which is a very large bitcoin address storage that provides very many bitcoin addresses

Bitcoin addresses are actually the 256-bit SHA hash of an ECDSA public key. so it's a 160-bit hash of a 256-bit hash of a public key. While the target key space (160 bits) is smaller. It is very difficult to break such type of encryption and needs a lot of processing Breaking this level of encryption requires a huge amount of processing power.It will take more time to hack than mine these coins.

to brute force a specific address can happen on the first attempt.. or somewhere inbetween that and the final attempt in a few undecillion years of trying 1000 addresses a second.

2^160=1461501637330902918203684832716283019655932542976
/1000 tries a second /60 seconds a minute /60 minutes an hour /24 hours a day /365 days a year
=46343912903694200000000000000000000000 years

possible yes. if you hand the project down to your offspring and they hand the project down to their offspring and for Undecillion of generations of your family you all keep trying.

..
as for colliding. technically it has been done. because people have generated addresses using a low math formulae(no/low random number converted to a key) and so it didnt take long to get to that key

and the odds of coming across a random address is a few million(56mill) times better than trying to brute force a specific one..
but again it could happen first try or upto a few nonillion years (if done using good randomisation)

so the question. is it possible. yes..
is it practicle/probable to achieve it in reasonable time which when dedicating labour, electric and other costs make it worth doing.... no

good luck

all the technical discussions about this question apart the answer to your question is very simple: bitcoin was not created yesterday. it has been around for about 9 years and it had a real value for all that time (the incentive) if it was possible to brute force a bitcoin address then it would have already happened.

hello there before asking such question first you have to understand that blockchain cryptography is almost impossible to crack because it is made to be impossible to crack and the math is almost impossible to solve the brute force attack only works if you have this large dictionary of generated "password or keys" and it is inconvenient to do brute force attack using a normal computer since this will use the maximum power of computer and if the PK is not in your  dictionary and it is useless blockchain is made with high encryption.

If you have a lot of computing power, generating bitcoins will be more profitable. You don't have to do that.

You don't need a lot of computing power.  Here are all the private keys right here:
https://lbc.cryptoguru.org/dio/1 (https://lbc.cryptoguru.org/dio/1) 

Your key is in there too.  Think your money is safe?  Guess again.  It has already been cracked.

it is hard to brute force a bitcoin address in order to steal money you have to  consider things first before doing a brute force to specific address firs it takes long time to guess or to find the correct key to a specific address .

I also do not understand why they create a new address for each transaction because behind it all must have other purpose to make it, if its purpose to not be stolen the money I think it is not the reason because bitcoin is long been and until now still there indicates that the bitcoin system itself is not an easy one to crack.

i think it is not possible because when you are creating your bitcoin address, your wallet address will consist of many characters.
The brute force method will not cover all of combinations of the private key of some wallet to steal.

Bitcoin addresses are actually the 256-bit SHA hash of an ECDSA public key, so any vulnerabilities in those algorithms would constitute a vulnerability in bitcoin itself. Realistically, however, breaking this level of encryption requires a huge amount of processing power. Coincidentally it requires precisely the same kind of processing power that bitcoin mining requires and in almost every scenario it would be massively more profitable to mine than to hack.

You have to generate and hash a lot of ECDSA key pairs that you can't imagine before you can find a reasonable chance of collision. With current computing power, this takes longer than the age of the universe.

I thought you have gained at least some knowledge about Bitcoin in the past few years, but as it turns out, you are standing in line with the flood of FUD oriented newbs.

here's the address 12tLs9c9RsALt4ockxa1hB4iTCTSmxj2me (https://www.blockchain.com/en/btc/address/12tLs9c9RsALt4ockxa1hB4iTCTSmxj2me) contains 10,000 BTC
would you be kind to point me the exact page number where this bitcoin address is listed ;D


that page is a simple on-the-fly auto generated page of hex private keys listed in sequential order

It is possible to brute force some Bitcoin addresses, because some people generate their private keys in an insecure manner. Any (non-zero) 32 bytes can be a private key. So running sha256 over a passphrase gives an apparently random, but brute force-able private key.

In both mining and brute-forcing private keys, you are generating 256-bit numbers in the hope of finding one that fits a criteria. If the criteria is met, there is a reward. You can consider the effectiveness of brute-forcing private keys in terms of mining.

There are currently 22,268,987 addresses holding an average of 0.76 BTC each. The chances of finding one of 22M addresses out of 2¹⁶⁰ possible addresses is equivalent to a target of 0x000000000000000000000000000000000153CC3B000000000000000000000000 (assuming my math is correct).

That target corresponds to a difficulty of 1,764,330,921,064,039,848,434,241,513,961,029,632. If you compare that to the current difficulty of 5,363,678,461,481 and consider that the reward is only 0.76 BTC compared to 12.5 BTC, you will see that searching for addresses with a balance is incredibly inefficient compared to mining.

I think you're missing the point. You don't have to find the private key. You only have to find a private key that corresponds to a public key with the correct 160 bit hash. That is 2^(256-160) times easier than finding a private key that corresponds to the correct public key.

If you could brute force bitcoin addresses it wouldn't be very useful as a currency, would it? Even the (theoretical) quantum computers of the future will have a problem finding any bitcoin wallets with bitcoins in them. Even the wallets that are found are not going to be worth the energy consumed in the process of finding them. There is only really one wallet that matters and that is Satoshi's wallet. Since its easy to patch bitcoin to be quantum-proof, but would require you to move your coins to a quantum-proof wallet, the Satoshi wallet may be up for grabs by a quantum computing team, if in-fact Satoshi no longer has access to that wallet (or is not alive any longer).

If you want to try an experiment out for yourself, change your one of the seed words to your wallet. Do that 1000x and see if you get any free bitcoins!

In practice, bitcoin address creation may be brute force, but it is only applicable to misleading cipher phrases. It may just be the idea of "storing bitcoin in the mind", which is why they need so little money and why they won't be subsidized for a long time.

Why do people do forces out to believe that list of private keys do have corresponding bitcoins inside of those addresses. I doubt or believe there are fools who are trying to access those btc wallets and hoping or giving a shot to have some jackpots which they are just basically  like punching in the air without hitting up something  ;D
Even if you do try to input those keys for a lifetime i bet you wont able to check it all. haha

> Is it possible to win powerball 9 consecutive times.

It is possible when you pay a lot more than you can win

edit: ... or if you try often enough, for like a zillion years or so.

There is no such technology in the current state of the coin, and if so, Bitcoin has already collapsed.