How long would it take for the miners to crack a private key?

[IveBeenBit]

This thread got me thinking of a hypothetical sconario: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144020.msg1527091#msg1527091

Right now, the miners on the network are processing 24.2 Thash/second.

What if someone bought all the bitcoins and put them into a single address? In response, all the miners redirected their mining power to cracking the private key to that address.

How long would it take for the key to be found with a 75% likelyhood?

Or is it a bad question because the sort of computation you do for mining is too different from cracking ECDA? Would mining hardware not be suited for the job?

[wtfvanity]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=139735.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=11931.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=109117.0

[DannyHamilton]

If we built a Dyson sphere around the sun and captured all its energy for 32 years, without any loss, we could power a computer to count up to 2¹⁹². Of course, it wouldn’t have the energy left over to perform any useful calculations with this computer. But that’s just one star, and a measly one at that. A typical supernova releases something like 10⁵¹ ergs. If all of this energy could be channelled into a single orgy of computation, a 219-bit counter could be cycled through all of its states. These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximums that thermodynamics will allow. And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space.

Bruce Schneier

[jerfelix]

If we built a Dyson sphere around the sun and captured all its energy for 32 years, without any loss, we could power a computer to count up to 2¹⁹². Of course, it wouldn’t have the energy left over to perform any useful calculations with this computer. But that’s just one star, and a measly one at that. A typical supernova releases something like 10⁵¹ ergs. If all of this energy could be channelled into a single orgy of computation, a 219-bit counter could be cycled through all of its states. These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximums that thermodynamics will allow. And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space.

Bruce Schneier

So, not only CAN it be done, Bruce lays out an exact plan to do it!   This is horrible!  SELL SELL SELL!

[wtfvanity]

If we built a Dyson sphere around the sun and captured all its energy for 32 years, without any loss, we could power a computer to count up to 2¹⁹². Of course, it wouldn’t have the energy left over to perform any useful calculations with this computer. But that’s just one star, and a measly one at that. A typical supernova releases something like 10⁵¹ ergs. If all of this energy could be channelled into a single orgy of computation, a 219-bit counter could be cycled through all of its states. These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximums that thermodynamics will allow. And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space.

Bruce Schneier

I think this picture is in EVERY thread about this.

[wtfvanity]

I think this picture is in EVERY thread about this.

It's so fitting.

They are saying there is NO chance and explain what would have to happen for it to work. Which is not a chance. But if it makes people giggle why not?

[wtfvanity]

I think this picture is in EVERY thread about this.

It's so fitting.

They are saying there is NO chance and explain what would have to happen for it to work. Which is not a chance. But if it makes people giggle why not?

That's the point. The chick in the movie was telling him there was NO chance either, yet he misunderstood it to mean there was a chance because he is either dumb or dumber!

Okay, I'll agree with you. There is still a better chance that the scenario presented in the movie would happen than finding a private key.

[Raize]

There's probably a clip of the full scene somewhere on Youtube. He essentially said, "What's the chance of a girl like me and a guy like you hooking up? [SIC]" And she said, "very small." And he says, "What are you talking, about, like one in a hundred?" and her response is, "More like one in a million." And he pauses, stares blankly at her for a couple seconds and then says, "So you're telling me there's a chance..."

I used this image a while back when someone took a screenshot of their attempts to use vanity gen to crack the 1Dky address. It gleefully listed his chances in scientific notation, and it reminded me of this scene in Dumb and Dumber, so I went out, found that image, and pasted it inside his screenshot.

Here's the post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=94675.msg1140956#msg1140956

I'm not sure if this is the original use of it, I'm sure other people have had the same idea either before or since.

[Nesetalis]

brute force cracking of the encryption is hardly going to be the downfall of encryption though.
Whether its a side channel attack, flaw in the algorithm, or simple rubber hose cryptography... brute force is the last method of attack.