Bitcoin Forum

I thought of this last night, and not sure if this approached has been discussed before. The following is an example of how a rogue entity could send encrypted text messages back and forth to one another, and still keep the coins between themselves.

.011002
.011111
.01102
.0102
.0111
.01111
.0102
.011002
.01101
.01001
.011101
.011
.0102

.020101
.020002
.0211102
.021
.02101
.021
.02011
.020111
.0211
.02011
.02001
.021

The above that I devised is based on the simplest code readily available, but a more complex coding system, with each person having the key, can create a more complex one that would be a hell of a lot harder to crack. And it could all be done in the open for all to see.

In fact, a simple program could be built to create the sums on demand, ready to be hand-sent one-by-one or automatically, not all at once, but at a rate as if a human were inputting the amounts.

I started this post to bring awareness that this option exist and should be deeply considered.

Can you crack the code above?

~Bruno~

YOU TAKE THAT BACK ABOUT MY MOTHER!!!!   :o

Hmmmm this could be made into a wevsite easily!!!

Great idea, but what if the network accepts the payments in a funny order? Certainly won't always be the case, but it might happen. Your message of "cheese" could turn into "echsee"

Hmm maybe there is a timestamp when they were "sent" to the nodes (instead of looking at the timestamps when they were mined into a block)

Either that or the transactions would have to be sent over a longer time period to ensure that they are confirmed in order.

nah, you could just put 01,02,03... prefix or suffix to make sure correct order and send them all in one batch

do not needlessly pollute the blockchain

Yeah, basically you'd have to cron job the block chain for confirmed transaction then send the next letter so the time would take (if your lucky) 10 minutes per letter :/

You could however have one transaction represent multiple letters (maybe up to 5 letters) for example

with single letters(to show a comparison)

Multiple letters
You get the point...

there you go again taking shots at my mom agian!  :o

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a transaction has multiple outputs, doesn't the client generating the transaction have complete control over the numbering of the outputs? This would make it easy to read them in a certain order.

Interesting concept but it would be limited by the fact that for example .00000028 BTC could be misinterpreted as BA.

What would be more susceptible to observation is using all of the decimal places but denoting 2 places to each letter

Using base 27, where 0 is a space, A=1, ..., Z=26, it would be possible to fit 5 letters into 8 decimal digits since 27^5=14,348,907. So, conversion for "Your mom" would be as follows:


Decoding would be similar:


And so on for the next lines. You could extend this further by spending full coins (one preceding A-E won't end up going to the 9th digit, but F might, and anything higher will), but it would probably be a lot cheaper to just have multiple outputs and stick them together.

This may have been what Xenland was going for, but his look a little different... Of course, this works with a full alphabet and a character for a space or end of line, and would work with any sort of encryption that uses a 26 character alphabet. Slightly more compact than fatigue's, but a bit more difficult to work with.

Ahh but the complication is key to preventing decryption. I like it! The only spot i could see a possible misinterpretation is the 0 being transmitted. how would the receiver know clearly if there was a space or if the word was continued in the next transaction?

EDIT: i see now that it would be a standard to perform the decryption method 5 times in all situations.

Speaking of this...

Someone seemingly sent me such a message to my main public BTC address a while back in block 181957.  I never did figure out what it was supposed to say...

18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.0100111
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.01101001
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.01100011
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.01100101
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.001
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.01001101
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.01101001
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.0110111
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.01100101
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.01100011
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.0111001
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.01100001
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.0110011
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.011101
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.001
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.0100001
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.01110101
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.01101001
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.011011
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.011001
18TKNbSLTrd3a2W8mtoH5uNzFhWRWNcuHU: 0.8021192

It's ASCII: "Nice Minecraft Build"

Not sure about the last one. Change? IP address?

Ah, I tried that, but couldn't seem to make it work.  Maybe I failed to add the trailing zeros or something.  Anyway, thanks for translating.  ;)

You'd have to have less characters in the transaction or use big numbers like 1BTC then 2BTC to signifiy order I don't think its worth it

I didn't take into consideration the time aspect, therefore I modified the same message. My intent was to create an encrypted message as simple as possible. With the new coded message below--first part is a question and second part is the answer--it now does not matter in what order the coins are sent or received.

.0711002
.0821111
.081102
.08402
.05911
.004111
.05202
.0351002
.036101
.087001
.0471101
.0131
.06602

.1140101
.1150002
.19211102
.1651
.135101
.1891
.179011
.1320111
.13811
.146011
.126001
.1431

Feel free to still try to crack it. For a clue or two, it's in American English using very common words. Basically, both are complete sentences, albeit short and to the point. As you can clearly see, I did not change the order of the letters, but I easily could have, and the resulting text would still be the same.

Most here know that I'm not a coder, and a lot of the dialog above is kinda over my head, though I get the gist of what's being relayed and am capable of figuring out all that's been posted on this thread to date.

~Bruno~

If somebody had shown me this even before my involvement with Bitcoin/this forum, I would have recognized it as binary code within seconds and having the trailing zeros omitted. My message does not incorporate ASCII, although the zeros and ones are relevant.

~Bruno~

Namecoin is better at this.

I relatively agree- but to be honest eventually there will be so many trivial transactions (purchasing chewing gum, metro tickets) that it's hard to argue any attempt to use the protocol for communicating messages really makes a difference. Eventually we will have to deal with an enormous blockchain regardless, the sooner someone figures this out, the better.

Good point! The solution is not advocate or shun actions done on the block chain but fix it when it becomes a problem.

i was thinking of a service the one way or the other and thought of putting data into the receiving addresses as well for the purpose of data transmission. a certain size of prefix code can be generated in no time with vanitygen. if you consider clandestine message exchange of large groups with shared secrets, that would increase the available bits quite dramatically and as the message would be encrypted, the vanity prefix would not raise suspicion.

haha your getting those lames messages too eh?

Back to my encrypted message.

.0711002
.0821111
.081102
.08402
.05911
.004111
.05202
.0351002
.036101
.087001
.0471101
.0131
.06602

.1140101
.1150002
.19211102
.1651
.135101
.1891
.179011
.1320111
.13811
.146011
.126001
.1431

Let's see how easy I make it to decipher the above.

Strip away all 2s at the end of any transaction amount, for they were only put in place to lock in the 0 which is significant. If I were to do this type of messaging in RL, I would have randomized said 2 with any number between 2 and 9, inclusive.

Now strip away the 0s in the question and the 1s in the answer, for they were only in place to keep the transaction amounts at a minimum. I clearly see now that I could have used 0s in the reply opposed to the 1s, for it's the second paired numbers in each transaction that determines whether its a question or answer. What did I use for the pairings? Two numerical constants: 2.71828... and 3.14156...

Now you are left with only 0s and 1s, albeit not binary code, but some other code (vague hint).

With that, what are these two fictitious rogue individuals relaying?

~Bruno~

dumb.

There is no need for this encoding as amounts, you can just generate bitcoin addresses and send them money. A real bitcoin address (http://blockexplorer.com/t/2CBnKD8Vjq) can certainly send a message, and if you don't need the bitcoins back, one bitcoin address can hold 20 bytes of information itself.

Your message can also be coded, not a cipher, such as "one if by land, two if by sea". As in, today my paragraphs will start "dumb if by land, stupid if by sea".

Someday there will be Public Service Announcements reminding people not to litter the blockchain. "Give a shit, save a bit."  ;D