Could Satoshi Nakamoto be the CIA/NSA?

[malaimult]

I genuinely believe that the NSA/CIA can crack what they need to crack. These agencies have literally undisclosed and unlimited amounts; in the billions upon billions of dollars of funding at their disposal. They operate with little to no oversight. Even groups within them are assembled and given virtually unlimited budgets for "non-existant" projects.

The question is would they admit to the fact they could crack "any password" for reasons of:

- Constitutional Legality
- Risking jeopardizing their abilities which results in change of tactics by those under their watch.

Quantum computing is not necessarily out of the realm of possibilities in the future. And I have no doubt that the NSA can throw quite some interesting password rainbow/hash tables totally unavailable to the general public, combined with nearly unlimited compute power.

Again, just speculation; but I'd say you could have a password, true random, in the 30+ characters with even the most secure encryption algo and these agencies if need be would be able to zip right in.

They would, in my opinion, never let anyone know they did, or could, not even the offender or the person being looked into.

Again, unlimited money, power, and no oversight. Combine that with a huge army of damn smart people.

I'm just glad they are US Agencies

[Snorek]

the whole fact that EVERYONE involved with btc claims to have never met "satoshi" but only communicated with "him" though this forum or email does seem strange to me.  If you read about edward snowden he used similar tactics (he was a CIA agent) to hide his identity until he knew it was safe to talk to the journalists he was communicating with.

Then again, maybe they all have met satoshi and are just saying they "never met him" to keep the whole secrecy thing in tact

Snowden was not a CIA agent.

He was a contractor working on a CIA project.

True, but the access he had was akin to root access (sysadmin). A field operative would be the lowest on the totem pole (as people understand CIA agents as the Bourne guy).

A desk guy working in a NOC or SOC would get tons of access and the bigger picture. Everything has to pass through you. That was the level of access Snowden had though.

The fact that you mention Snowden is interesting. Now when I think about it it is totally possible that Snowden had access to information of highest clarence status.
But he did not mention Bitcoin in any of his reports, so either bitcoin is not CIA, NSA doing or truth is hidden so deep that even critical agents don't know about it.

[MF Doom]

the whole fact that EVERYONE involved with btc claims to have never met "satoshi" but only communicated with "him" though this forum or email does seem strange to me.  If you read about edward snowden he used similar tactics (he was a CIA agent) to hide his identity until he knew it was safe to talk to the journalists he was communicating with.

Then again, maybe they all have met satoshi and are just saying they "never met him" to keep the whole secrecy thing in tact

Snowden was not a CIA agent.

He was a contractor working on a CIA project.

True, but the access he had was akin to root access (sysadmin). A field operative would be the lowest on the totem pole (as people understand CIA agents as the Bourne guy).

A desk guy working in a NOC or SOC would get tons of access and the bigger picture. Everything has to pass through you. That was the level of access Snowden had though.

The fact that you mention Snowden is interesting. Now when I think about it it is totally possible that Snowden had access to information of highest clarence status.
But he did not mention Bitcoin in any of his reports, so either bitcoin is not CIA, NSA doing or truth is hidden so deep that even critical agents don't know about it.

He did have access to a lot of highly classified info, but that doesn't necessarily mean he had knowledge of everything.  He was moreso involved in computer surveilance type work.  Its possible btc would have been just a small project by only a few members, and possibly designed to be handed off to look like it came from outside the gvt

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

the whole fact that EVERYONE involved with btc claims to have never met "satoshi" but only communicated with "him" though this forum or email does seem strange to me.  If you read about edward snowden he used similar tactics (he was a CIA agent) to hide his identity until he knew it was safe to talk to the journalists he was communicating with.

Then again, maybe they all have met satoshi and are just saying they "never met him" to keep the whole secrecy thing in tact

Snowden was not a CIA agent.

He was a contractor working on a CIA project.

True, but the access he had was akin to root access (sysadmin). A field operative would be the lowest on the totem pole (as people understand CIA agents as the Bourne guy).

A desk guy working in a NOC or SOC would get tons of access and the bigger picture. Everything has to pass through you. That was the level of access Snowden had though.

The fact that you mention Snowden is interesting. Now when I think about it it is totally possible that Snowden had access to information of highest clarence status.
But he did not mention Bitcoin in any of his reports, so either bitcoin is not CIA, NSA doing or truth is hidden so deep that even critical agents don't know about it.

I think some gus give way too much credit to the government. Granted, they have tons of geniuses working there that have come up with technologies such as Tor encryption, but not every technological breakthrough has to come from the gov. I think Satoshi is/were totally unrelated to governmental agencies.

[malaimult]

the whole fact that EVERYONE involved with btc claims to have never met "satoshi" but only communicated with "him" though this forum or email does seem strange to me.  If you read about edward snowden he used similar tactics (he was a CIA agent) to hide his identity until he knew it was safe to talk to the journalists he was communicating with.

Then again, maybe they all have met satoshi and are just saying they "never met him" to keep the whole secrecy thing in tact

Snowden was not a CIA agent.

He was a contractor working on a CIA project.

True, but the access he had was akin to root access (sysadmin). A field operative would be the lowest on the totem pole (as people understand CIA agents as the Bourne guy).

A desk guy working in a NOC or SOC would get tons of access and the bigger picture. Everything has to pass through you. That was the level of access Snowden had though.

The fact that you mention Snowden is interesting. Now when I think about it it is totally possible that Snowden had access to information of highest clarence status.
But he did not mention Bitcoin in any of his reports, so either bitcoin is not CIA, NSA doing or truth is hidden so deep that even critical agents don't know about it.

I think some gus give way too much credit to the government. Granted, they have tons of geniuses working there that have come up with technologies such as Tor encryption, but not every technological breakthrough has to come from the gov. I think Satoshi is/were totally unrelated to governmental agencies.

I'd have to agree.

What most people don't know is that Satoshi Nakamoto was nothing more than a school science project for a technology pilot school:  Nakamoto Elementary School; which is located in Japan. The project which won first honors was by a gifted student (what would be in the US a 6th grader) with a given name of Satoshi. For minor/age reasons they released only his first name; and his white paper which was given a major re-polish by his teacher/mentor who helped him throughout - decided the project would be published under the nom de plure Satoshi Nakamoto. In honor of Satoshi, the boy, and Nakamoto, the school.

Nothing more.

[malaimult]

the whole fact that EVERYONE involved with btc claims to have never met "satoshi" but only communicated with "him" though this forum or email does seem strange to me.  If you read about edward snowden he used similar tactics (he was a CIA agent) to hide his identity until he knew it was safe to talk to the journalists he was communicating with.

Then again, maybe they all have met satoshi and are just saying they "never met him" to keep the whole secrecy thing in tact

Snowden was not a CIA agent.

He was a contractor working on a CIA project.

True, but the access he had was akin to root access (sysadmin). A field operative would be the lowest on the totem pole (as people understand CIA agents as the Bourne guy).

A desk guy working in a NOC or SOC would get tons of access and the bigger picture. Everything has to pass through you. That was the level of access Snowden had though.

The fact that you mention Snowden is interesting. Now when I think about it it is totally possible that Snowden had access to information of highest clarence status.
But he did not mention Bitcoin in any of his reports, so either bitcoin is not CIA, NSA doing or truth is hidden so deep that even critical agents don't know about it.

I think some gus give way too much credit to the government. Granted, they have tons of geniuses working there that have come up with technologies such as Tor encryption, but not every technological breakthrough has to come from the gov. I think Satoshi is/were totally unrelated to governmental agencies.

I'd have to agree.

What most people don't know is that Satoshi Nakamoto was nothing more than a school science project for a technology pilot school:  Nakamoto Elementary School; which is located in Japan. The project which won first honors was by a gifted student (what would be in the US a 6th grader) with a given name of Satoshi. For minor/age reasons they released only his first name; and his white paper which was given a major re-polish by his teacher/mentor who helped him throughout - decided the project would be published under the nom de plure Satoshi Nakamoto. In honor of Satoshi, the boy, and Nakamoto, the school.

Nothing more.

Lastly; the project was then released online; and picked up by a totally different group of "first adopters" who then took it and ran with it.

But the early wallets, which were used meerly as a proof of "it works" - were discarded. Which is why all those Bitcoins in those first wallets - large sums; have never moved. At all. They never will. They saw no value. Thumbdrives thrown away.

[R2D221]

What most people don't know is that Satoshi Nakamoto was nothing more than a school science project for a technology pilot school:  Nakamoto Elementary School; which is located in Japan. The project which won first honors was by a gifted student (what would be in the US a 6th grader) with a given name of Satoshi. For minor/age reasons they released only his first name; and his white paper which was given a major re-polish by his teacher/mentor who helped him throughout - decided the project would be published under the nom de plure Satoshi Nakamoto. In honor of Satoshi, the boy, and Nakamoto, the school.

Nothing more.

Lastly; the project was then released online; and picked up by a totally different group of "first adopters" who then took it and ran with it.

But the early wallets, which were used meerly as a proof of "it works" - were discarded. Which is why all those Bitcoins in those first wallets - large sums; have never moved. At all. They never will. They saw no value. Thumbdrives thrown away.

[citation needed]

[RodeoX]

I hate to be a buzz kill, but in the absence of any evidence whatsoever... Well you do realize your just writing fiction, right?

[malaimult]

What isnt fiction?

Nakamoto Elementary School. It is there, take a look.

[neurotypical]

What isnt fiction?

Nakamoto Elementary School. It is there, take a look.

Nakamoto is a very common Japanese surname. I went to Japan once and I remember in the hotel there was a list of of people that were attending a meeting in the restaurant and I saw at least 2 persons that had Nakamoto on the name (i can read some of the kanji stuff)

[roslinpl]

What if bitcoin miners are being used to generate rainbow tables for cracking password hashes. It is a known fact that with a rainbow table you can crack a password hash in seconds rather than years, and in big-O notation brute-forcing passwords takes O(n²) time which would also take years for a 14+ character password.

Now to generate a rainbow table with character set 0-9, a-z, A-Z, + all special characters (@!#$%^&*(){}/*-+_=) would also take years to generate in advance if you don't have access to a distributed grid of computers dividing the processing power between themselves. And it costs quite abit of BTC to buy processing power from the cloud. And coming to think of it, aren't the bitcoins miners doing just that?

Here's the genius part. What if the CIA/NSA devised a way so that the bitcoin miners are actually generating the rainbow hashes needed to crack any password up to 64 characters in length. Wouldn't that practically give them access to any corporation + home wifi + any account needed?

I can think of a multitude of applications to the bitcoin distributed network, not excluding DDOSing, generating hashes for different types of decoding algorithms such as MD5, SHA1 (which are the most commonly used to protect passwords in databases), etc. Even the term that miners are generating hashes gives you the slight doubt that, what if?

Alright you might argue that now developers are using salt mechanism, but still...its food for thought. Any fanboys who read the code, care to give their opinion? Now don't get me wrong, I'm just inserting the notion of what if? I quite like the uses of bitcoin myself.

Here's the genius part. What if the CIA/NSA devised a way so that the bitcoin miners are actually generating the rainbow hashes needed to crack any password up to 64 characters in length. Wouldn't that practically give them access to any corporation + home wifi + any account needed?

So far as I know Bitcoin is open-source project and code was reviewed thousand times by great coders from around the world.
So far nobody found any hidden traps. What I am saying is your speculation is senseless.



PS.

Wouldn't that practically give them access to any corporation + home wifi + any account needed?

Are you serious? mostly asking about home wifi part
Come on ... ...

@Satoshi, please tell us one day how much were you laughing from all of those speculations But well ... most of those speculations are not funny at all I must say and pointless.


Best regards.

[malaimult]

My point was this thread is well a bit pointless.

Commenting, speculating about things which no one here has any, zero, nothing, zip, information on.

Just having fun. I'd say my post holds about as much weight as most of the "what ifs" posted in this thread.

[malaimult]

What if bitcoin miners are being used to generate rainbow tables for cracking password hashes. It is a known fact that with a rainbow table you can crack a password hash in seconds rather than years, and in big-O notation brute-forcing passwords takes O(n²) time which would also take years for a 14+ character password.

Now to generate a rainbow table with character set 0-9, a-z, A-Z, + all special characters (@!#$%^&*(){}/*-+_=) would also take years to generate in advance if you don't have access to a distributed grid of computers dividing the processing power between themselves. And it costs quite abit of BTC to buy processing power from the cloud. And coming to think of it, aren't the bitcoins miners doing just that?

Here's the genius part. What if the CIA/NSA devised a way so that the bitcoin miners are actually generating the rainbow hashes needed to crack any password up to 64 characters in length. Wouldn't that practically give them access to any corporation + home wifi + any account needed?

I can think of a multitude of applications to the bitcoin distributed network, not excluding DDOSing, generating hashes for different types of decoding algorithms such as MD5, SHA1 (which are the most commonly used to protect passwords in databases), etc. Even the term that miners are generating hashes gives you the slight doubt that, what if?

Alright you might argue that now developers are using salt mechanism, but still...its food for thought. Any fanboys who read the code, care to give their opinion? Now don't get me wrong, I'm just inserting the notion of what if? I quite like the uses of bitcoin myself.

Here's the genius part. What if the CIA/NSA devised a way so that the bitcoin miners are actually generating the rainbow hashes needed to crack any password up to 64 characters in length. Wouldn't that practically give them access to any corporation + home wifi + any account needed?

So far as I know Bitcoin is open-source project and code was reviewed thousand times by great coders from around the world.
So far nobody found any hidden traps. What I am saying is your speculation is senseless.



PS.

Wouldn't that practically give them access to any corporation + home wifi + any account needed?

Are you serious? mostly asking about home wifi part
Come on ... ...

@Satoshi, please tell us one day how much were you laughing from all of those speculations But well ... most of those speculations are not funny at all I must say and pointless.


Best regards.

What if its not the NSA or CIA the bitcoin miners are working for... but actually North Korea!

Possible?

OR....

What if Bitcoin was just an idea tossed out on the table by asic/wafer / hardware and chip manufacturers.

Guys... what if we designed a roadmap to create a product that the user creates themselves...

We allow people to:  PRINT MONEY.

Who wouldnt want this product right? They will buy it.

Now... how can we make it even more profitable.

GUY 1:  Print a bunch for ourselves in the begining and wait to see if it takes off.

VP:  Love it great next idea!

GUY 2:   We could make it get more and more difficult, you know the math stuff, so they are always having to spend more money to reinvest in more chips and wafers and asics.

VP:  LOVE IT GREAT IDEA!

Guy 3:  How about we make it very power consuming... I'm thinking maybe we could work out some kickbacks from the major global power providers...

VP:   MONEY GUY MONEY! BUT QUESTION... WHAT DOES IT DO??? All this power, hardware, chips, work?

Guy 1: It gets us f'n rich.

What if?

[satnof]

well, it's a given that it is pure speculation and just a working theory. I don't have the leisure of time to go cross-examine the code, but if someone funds the project or we can maybe do some type of collective funding, then I will get a team organized to put this theory to rest.

Obviously if there's interest. I mean it would make for a badass movie if it's true, but yes it is science fiction only at this point, and in the trollolol archive is where it should be filed until further proof emerges. 

[acid_rain]

well, it's a given that it is pure speculation and just a working theory. I don't have the leisure of time to go cross-examine the code, but if someone funds the project or we can maybe do some type of collective funding, then I will get a team organized to put this theory to rest.

Obviously if there's interest. I mean it would make for a badass movie if it's true, but yes it is science fiction only at this point, and in the trollolol archive is where it should be filed until further proof emerges. 

Let's say you get funded to do your thing. how would you go about testing it?

Would you be willing to disclose your real identity to publish your research on the subject?

And why don't you include some of the other plausible theories while you're at it?

[manselr]

well, it's a given that it is pure speculation and just a working theory. I don't have the leisure of time to go cross-examine the code, but if someone funds the project or we can maybe do some type of collective funding, then I will get a team organized to put this theory to rest.

Obviously if there's interest. I mean it would make for a badass movie if it's true, but yes it is science fiction only at this point, and in the trollolol archive is where it should be filed until further proof emerges. 

Let's say you get funded to do your thing. how would you go about testing it?

Would you be willing to disclose your real identity to publish your research on the subject?

And why don't you include some of the other plausible theories while you're at it?

Some people don't care about personal recognition. Bitcoin has been a success and Satoshi is rich, he doesn't need to be famous. Also, it's a bad idea to disclose your identity when you are doing something that could challenge the banking status quo.

[satnof]

well, it's a given that it is pure speculation and just a working theory. I don't have the leisure of time to go cross-examine the code, but if someone funds the project or we can maybe do some type of collective funding, then I will get a team organized to put this theory to rest.

Obviously if there's interest. I mean it would make for a badass movie if it's true, but yes it is science fiction only at this point, and in the trollolol archive is where it should be filed until further proof emerges.  

Let's say you get funded to do your thing. how would you go about testing it?

Would you be willing to disclose your real identity to publish your research on the subject?

And why don't you include some of the other plausible theories while you're at it?

Some people don't care about personal recognition. Bitcoin has been a success and Satoshi is rich, he doesn't need to be famous. Also, it's a bad idea to disclose your identity when you are doing something that could challenge the banking status quo.

fair points there.

The way I would probably go about it, is to simulate the bitcoin network in a closed loop, and then test to capture what kind of data packets are being sent outside of the network or if the "complex equations the miners are solving" are being stored in some kind of repository. I'm thinking it doesn't need to be a large network but you need to be scalable in your testing, so more than few nodes are needed for sure.

Apart from that I'd hire people to go through the actual source code.

2nd point I would have to agree with manselr and not disclose my personal identifiable information.

3rd answer to your question is if we test other theories, it would become endless. I just want to know if bitcoin is secure as a protocol to use or not. There are so many theories that are wild out there, so tell me which ones are plausible and i'll tell you if it's doable or not.

[bitcollins85]

You do not have the security clearance to know that, or to even ask the question.
No evidence just speculation. Bitcoin is open source, stop making up bullshit.

[satnof]

You do not have the security clearance to know that, or to even ask the question.
No evidence just speculation. Bitcoin is open source, stop making up bullshit.

bullshit is what the economy thrives on, my fellow random person on a forum.  

[acid_rain]

MOAR!!!