Sign/Verify Messages Important?

[BTCGalaxyA12]

The first post directly leads to how to get a wallet and verify it.
On Apr 27, 2023 via computer with some help of guide thread I managed to do it on Electrum wallet.
Besides successfully verifying the message, I also managed to send Encrypted Messages (PGP Public Keys).
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=996318.msg62156166#msg62156166
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5289839.msg62156606#msg62156606

There is one more question I want to ask is how important it is to sign a Bitcoin address message because from several sources that I have read so far Bitcoin is safe from hacking.

Thanks.

[Call_Me_Guru]

There is one more question I want to ask is how important it is to sign a Bitcoin address message because from several sources that I have read so far Bitcoin is safe from hacking.

Signing doesn't protect you from hacking, hackers can hack anything connected to the internet and get away with it once clever. Signing is important to clarifies and settles dispute to be sure you are the owner of the wallet.

It validates your ownership.

[Little Mouse]

That message feature has nothing to do with Bitcoin or bitcoin getting hacked.
The message feature ensures privacy of the message and authenticity of the message. Imagine someone claiming satoshi nakamoto but can't prove it. Craig Wright is claiming that he is satoshi but he can only prove when he can sign a message from the very early bitcoin addresses.

[Yamane_Keto]

There is one more question I want to ask is how important it is to sign a Bitcoin address message because from several sources that I have read so far Bitcoin is safe from hacking.

On the contrary, signing the message requires the private key, so if your device is affected, hackers may be able to know your private key and thus steal your coins.
Sign message aims to prove ownership, and therefore you need one address (it does not mean to have BTC balance, and it is better to have no balance) and then you use it to prove ownership of the account, ownership of your money, and other things, it is like your own signature.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

There is one more question I want to ask is how important it is to sign a Bitcoin address message because from several sources that I have read so far Bitcoin is safe from hacking.

Thanks.

Signing a message is just like writing a message. It has nothing to do with the wallet security.
I assume you saw it on this forum where people are signing message to verify their bitcointalk account?

It's obvious that a bitcoin address private key will not be shared with anyone and signing a message with that particular address means you own the address. When you do something from an address that you own and when you do it from an account that means you are the owner of the account too. That's how we interpret it.

[Aikidoka]

The first topic you posted is about staking your BTC address on the forum, which could be useful in case you get hacked or lose access to your account. By staking your BTC address, you can prove that you are the owner of the account and can regain access by signing a message that confirms you are the true owner of your bitcointalk account.

The second topic is about PGP encryption, which is an encryption method used for privacy, security purposes and proving the authenticity of messages. PGP can also be used to prove that you are the original owner of messages by attaching a digital signature to them.

There is one more question I want to ask is how important it is to sign a Bitcoin address message because from several sources that I have read so far Bitcoin is safe from hacking.

Neither of the topics you posted are directly related to the question you asked. Signing a Bitcoin address doesn't help you to prevent your Bitcoin from being hacked but the most extremely important aspect of Bitcoin security is protecting your seed phrase. It's essential to ensure that only you have access to your seed phrase and to take measures to keep it safe and secure from potential threats.

[sheenshane]

There is one more question I want to ask is how important it is to sign a Bitcoin address message because from several sources that I have read so far Bitcoin is safe from hacking.

You're wrong with this perspective and I think you need to better understand how Bitcoin will work.

It's been said above, a signed message is the only way to verify ownership but there's nothing to do with your Bitcoin security.
Staking your address here in the forum is only to prevent hacking your account here in the forum and prove that it is yours by staking your Bitcoin address.

You can learn more about Bitcoin security or crypto in general here.

[SamReomo]

Your signed message that is verified won't protect you from hacking but with that you can regain access to your account and you can prove that you are the real owner of the account not the one who hacked it. It doesn't necessarily protect you from hackers.

In this regard I must say that prevention is better than cure, so it is far better to sign your message and get it quoted. If you do the step successfully than your fears regarding the loss of your account will be less compare to the way they might be before doing that.

However, in order to be safe from hackers you must have to learn  about the operating systems and software that you are currently using. Always try to get up-to-date security updates as well as software updates to avoid being victim of vulnerabilities of the out dated software.

[BTCGalaxyA12]

I am very happy with all the responses, there is a mistake that happened to me who associated the signing of the message to Bitcoin hacking.
In conclusion, sign message to prove the ownership of the user's address when someone comes recognizes the ownership of the address.

I admit it is better not and recognizes it than to admit myself smart but there is no knowledge.
Thank you for getting new knowledge again.

Is my process Sign/Verify Messages and Send Encrypted Messages (PGP Public Keys) is correct?

[Yamane_Keto]

Is my process Sign/Verify Messages and Send Encrypted Messages (PGP Public Keys) is correct?

When you sign the message, you give the second party, the bitcoin address, the message, and the signature, and therefore there is no encrypted content, as the goal is to prove ownership of the account, while in PGP the goal is to hide the message so that the second party cannot read it.


The main differences could be:

• Bitcoin Sign/Verify Messages can be made and verified offline.
• In PGP you need to send it or fetch it from any keyserver.

• Bitcoin Sign/Verify Messages isn't to send an encryption message it is public data.
• in PGP you need to send it privately.

I think the only problem is that signing a message using Bech32 addresses or bc1 addresses does not follow a specific standard, and therefore you may encounter problems verifying messages if you do not specify the software.

[witcher_sense]

There is one more question I want to ask is how important it is to sign a Bitcoin address message because from several sources that I have read so far Bitcoin is safe from hacking.

Whenever you feel the need to prove ownership over a specific Bitcoin address, you take a private key corresponding to that address and use it in combination with some plain text to produce a signature. Anyone having access to a specific piece of software, knowledge, or desire to verify your ownership can do that by feeding to a verification algorithm your address in question, a message, and a signature created during the signing process. Message signing is arguably the only reliable way to prove that you own something without revealing any sensitive information because revealing one usually leads to the loss of ownership rights. So, it doesn't protect you from literal hacks but may help regain control of your funds in some cases, especially when you need to prove that you had those coins in the first place.

[Flexystar]

Just amazing to read how this technology works. After reading all the responses I had to see how the whole thing works and found an interesting article. Basically, we have "asymmetric cryptography", that helps in the process of securing and signing a message.

Thanks to Ralph Merkle, Whitfield diffie, Martin hellman, these were the three great minds behind them who invented the process of asymmetric cryptography in the year 1976! It's really astounding to see how various researches in the past helped shape the bitcoin that we see today.

Asymmetric cryptography is one of the most powerful techniques in computing and a fundamental part of the security of the Internet and blockchain-type networks. Its use has allowed high levels of security where it is necessary, guaranteeing privacy and even anonymity.

What is asymmetric cryptography?

As I understand from the article that I read we can use the signing process for:

• Verification of origin of funds
• Be able to make payments to a specific address safely
• As a preliminary to the configuration of multi-sig or multi-signature purses
• Be able to prove that you are the owner of an address.

I am not sure if these are the only special wallets/tools that can sign the message OR any wallet can do but from the reading:

• Bitcoin Core
• Electrum Wallet
• Trezor Wallet
• Bitcoin Signature Tool - Seems to be referred tool
• GitHub library ?

I am not so sure about the GitHub signing and how it happens but it seems we have an open source tool for signing?

@OP, I believe this article would help you a lot in understanding more about the entire process and how to work with various tools. I have just shared the chunks of article.
Even I am introducing myself to the singing so deeply for the first time, so here you go mate:

How to sign a message with your bitcoin address?

Security of this system
Surely you wonder if this system is really safe and cannot be broken in some way. If that is one of your concerns, you might like to know that you have nothing to worry about: this function is secure, in fact it is highly secure.

This is possible thanks to the fact that Bitcoin uses the digital signature algorithm ECDSA to perform all these operations, and for the moment, said algorithm next to the curve secp256k1, is considered highly safe. In short, the security of both Bitcoin and this function is protected by very powerful cryptography that has not been broken at the moment. To give you an idea of ​​its security, you should know that this process is based on a superior security than almost anyone that you use in your day to day in some processes with online banking, messaging, telephony, ...

On the other hand, and as you can see, it is a really simple process, in fact, if you know encryption and decryption systems for messages such as PGP (or GPG) you will realize that it works using the same basis of principles.

The objective of all this is to provide you with a tool to send and verify information safely and without any kind of intermediary for it. As always, Bitcoin has been targeting decentralization from its inception and features like these only attest to that effort.

[Yamane_Keto]

I am not sure if these are the only special wallets/tools that can sign the message OR any wallet can do but from the reading:

They are not related to a specific software or wallet, but rather to standard.
Here are some of the forum members' efforts:

Bitcoin Message Tool - command-line signer & verifier
Sign and verify easily with BitcoinMessageTools Github: https://github.com/shadowy-pycoder/BitcoinMessageTools

Warning, use the above tools at your own risk and make sure that the private key does not contain any bitcoins.

You can sign/verify bitcoin messages using Sign using RFC6979 standard or Electrum standard

[NotATether]

Thanks to Ralph Merkle, Whitfield diffie, Martin hellman, these were the three great minds behind them who invented the process of asymmetric cryptography in the year 1976! It's really astounding to see how various researches in the past helped shape the bitcoin that we see today.

Did you know that Ellis, Cocks and Williamson of the British GCHQ separately invented key exchange 8 years ago in 1969 but were not allowed to share it for national security reasons?

I am not sure if these are the only special wallets/tools that can sign the message OR any wallet can do but from the reading:

They are not related to a specific software or wallet, but rather to standard.
Here are some of the forum members' efforts:

Bitcoin Message Tool - command-line signer & verifier
Sign and verify easily with BitcoinMessageTools Github: https://github.com/shadowy-pycoder/BitcoinMessageTools

Warning, use the above tools at your own risk and make sure that the private key does not contain any bitcoins.

You can sign/verify bitcoin messages using Sign using RFC6979 standard or Electrum standard

If you're talking about the "unified message display output", then I would not necessarily consider Electrum's way of doing things to be a standard, as it is the only wallet that prints it like that. Also RFC6979 nonces are not secure for signed messages and the nonces should be created randomly.

[Flexystar]

Thanks to Ralph Merkle, Whitfield diffie, Martin hellman, these were the three great minds behind them who invented the process of asymmetric cryptography in the year 1976! It's really astounding to see how various researches in the past helped shape the bitcoin that we see today.

Did you know that Ellis, Cocks and Williamson of the British GCHQ separately invented key exchange 8 years ago in 1969 but were not allowed to share it for national security reasons?

I am not sure if these are the only special wallets/tools that can sign the message OR any wallet can do but from the reading:

[,,,]

[,,,]

That's psych!
So they lost the credit with the time just to make sure they have national security in line?
I did not get the point really, because during the 1969 most of the wars were disappeared in the air or were just cold wars here and there.

What was the event where these "key exchanges" useful at the time.

Would be grateful if you point me to article or something where I can read the history. It gives chills for sure when you try to imagine past and it's cold connection with what is invented today.


Does it mean Ralph Merkle, Whitfield diffie, Martin hellman just took their shot by reublishing the work of those three? 

I am not sure if these are the only special wallets/tools that can sign the message OR any wallet can do but from the reading:

They are not related to a specific software or wallet, but rather to standard.
Here are some of the forum members' efforts:

Bitcoin Message Tool - command-line signer & verifier
Sign and verify easily with BitcoinMessageTools Github: https://github.com/shadowy-pycoder/BitcoinMessageTools

Warning, use the above tools at your own risk and make sure that the private key does not contain any bitcoins.

You can sign/verify bitcoin messages using Sign using RFC6979 standard or Electrum standard

In fact, that seems like an uncommon tool to use and a person like me with little tech knowledge could end up messing up things easily. The watching number is still good on that github thread.

Far better to use wallets. Electrum still seems easier though it may not be standard, but it does the work.

[bettercrypto]

The first post directly leads to how to get a wallet and verify it.
On Apr 27, 2023 via computer with some help of guide thread I managed to do it on Electrum wallet.
Besides successfully verifying the message, I also managed to send Encrypted Messages (PGP Public Keys).
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=996318.msg62156166#msg62156166
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5289839.msg62156606#msg62156606

There is one more question I want to ask is how important it is to sign a Bitcoin address message because from several sources that I have read so far Bitcoin is safe from hacking.

Thanks.

The sign/verify message is just a confirmation that the address you use is really yours, I mean you are the one in control, not someone else. Second, it seems that the sign message is not a tool to prevent you from hacking.

       Since I have never seen an account hacked because of a sign message, it seems that there is no such scenario. What I know is that in order to avoid being hacked somehow, you should use google authenticator, anti-phishing, but not with the sign-message.

[yudi09]

I am very happy with all the responses, there is a mistake that happened to me who associated the signing of the message to Bitcoin hacking.
In conclusion, sign message to prove the ownership of the user's address when someone comes recognizes the ownership of the address.

I am happy for every explanation given so that it makes you get answers regarding the purpose of signing/verifying messages, I mean getting used to locking a topic after a solution is obtained from the topic's purpose is a good thing.

You can compare, read and judge for yourself almost all the explanations given contain the same intention that the sign/verify message has nothing to do with hacking but to prove ownership of the address for the coins stored therein.

I admit it is better not and recognizes it than to admit myself smart but there is no knowledge.

This is a good point.

Thank you for getting new knowledge again.

You are always welcome to ask questions on your ignorance.

it seems that there is no such scenario. What I know is that in order to avoid being hacked somehow, you should use google authenticator, anti-phishing, but not with the sign-message.

Be careful with things related to online because it can be fatal. Selecting a Multi Signature address is more convenient than selecting a 2FA address.

[hZti]

To sign a message can be a tool to identify you as a specific person. It must not have anything to do with bitcoin or any from of payment.

For example you can write articles and publish them somewhere. If you sign the article with your bitcoin signature you can make shure that there is not an imposter that can publish in your name. This has nothing to do with bitcoin or payment but still uses the possibility of bitcoin signatures.

[Silver005]

I totally agree that signing in a message or verify message has nothing to do with your wallet or your balance rather it plays a role of ownership of the very account,to show that you are the rightful owner of the account, and that is why there was some certain areas you got and it demands secret code, and some will instruct you not to show this to anyone else, in other to protect you from being hacked or temper with.

Because all this some secret code help to secure your account from the hackers because someone may try to guess your secret code but because he or she was not the
One who created the secret code and may miss one pin and he or she can't have access to that very account,to verify is to prove that what you have written so far is correct and should be continue,it is just like giving go ahead on something ok..so alot of benefits and it legitimate is that signing and verify message..