How much time to crack a private key?

[BurtW]

Heck with all this hard maff stuff.  You can determine how long it will take just by doing it!

1) Go to this thread:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=107172.0;topicseen
2) Download the program
3) Enter all the public keys from this thread:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92423.0;topicseen
3) Run the program
4) Report back here when you crack one of the richest keys!

[1714839452]

1714839452

[1714839452]

1714839452

[conspirosphere.tk]

Very cool. Thanks.
Will phone back if I find any coin in the deep space.

[maxcarjuzaa]

Heck with all this hard maff stuff.  You can determine how long it will take just by doing it!

1) Go to this thread:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=107172.0;topicseen
2) Download the program
3) Enter all the public keys from this thread:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92423.0;topicseen
3) Run the program
4) Report back here when you crack one of the richest keys!

ty!

[DeathAndTaxes]

Lolz.  I got to remember that next time Burt.

[HighInBC]

You cannot crack a private key by brute force, there are not enough atoms available.

It is possible one day people will find failings in the algorithms, but they would have to break more than one.

[conspirosphere.tk]

Ohmygod! This thing found thousands of public/private key combinations in a few hours on a couple of old puters of mine.
It's all in the text files it created! 
I just imported a private key on blockchain.info and it got accepted (it was empty, luckily for the owner).
 
Now the point is: if it is possible to import all of the private keys that this proggie finds all at once in a wallet, this may well be the beginning of the end of Bitcoin. In any case I see this as an huge as an ocean BTC security breach.

Please anyone in the know tell me something. I am quite terrified and wondering if it is the case of getting out of Dodge-BTC at full speed.

[DannyHamilton]

Ohmygod! This thing found thousands of public/private key combinations in a few hours on a couple of old puters of mine.
It's all in the text files it created! 
I just imported a private key on blockchain.info and it got accepted (it was empty, luckily for the owner).
 
Now the point is: if it is possible to import all of the private keys that this proggie finds all at once in a wallet, this may well be the beginning of the end of Bitcoin. In any case I see this as an huge as an ocean BTC security breach.

Please anyone in the know tell me something. I am quite terrified and wondering if it is the case of getting out of Dodge-BTC at full speed.

That's sarcasm, right?  You can't possibly have been on bitcointalk.org long enough to have over 900 posts and actually believe anything you just wrote.

The program you are running randomly generates private keys.  You can generate as many private keys as you want.  Generate thousands.  Generate hundreds of thousands. Generate millions.  It doesn't matter, they all are going to be empty, because nobody else has generated/used any of them yet.

The one you imported was empty because you haven't sent/received any bitcoins there yet.  It isn't "luckily for the owner".  You are the owner.  You just generated a brand new private key that nobody else has ever generated before.  You are the first person to use it.  Actually, you just generated thousands of brand new bitcoin addresses that nobody has ever used before.  You are now the proud owner of several thousand brand new, unused, empty bitcoin addresses.  What will you be doing with them?

[conspirosphere.tk]

You are now the proud owner of several thousand brand new, unused, empty bitcoin addresses.  What will you be doing with them?

Ok. Then since it's so pointless, could anyone suggest a way to import all these private keys at once in a wallet?

[DannyHamilton]

You are now the proud owner of several thousand brand new, unused, empty bitcoin addresses.  What will you be doing with them?

Ok. Then since it's so pointless, could anyone suggest a way to import all these private keys at once in a wallet?

I'm not aware of any tool in common use that will allow you to easily import a list of thousands of private keys into a wallet.  There probably isn't much use for one.  It shouldn't be very difficult to write though.  What wallet are you using (Electrum, Multibit, Bitcoin-Qt, blockchain.info/wallet )?

For 100 BTC fee, I'd probably take the time to write up a bulk private key import tool for you. Although if what you are looking for is collisions with addresses that have bitcoins stored in them, why bother importing all the empty private keys?  Wouldn't it be better to have a tool that will scan all the addresses and output a list of the addresses that actually have bitcoins associated with them (if you ever actually found any)?  Then you could just import those private keys.

[BitStick]

This is the number of seconds since the big bang 13.7 billion years ago
432043200000000000  (60*60*24*365*13700000000)

This is 2^256
115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639936

2^256 / 432043200000000000 will give the number of attempts per second since the dawn of time to try all the combinations in a brute force attack.

If you can find a computer capable of testing 7778752908943661823213959165079225774884848073919 hashes a second and you manage to live for 13.7 billion years you might stand a chance.

Best of luck  

[conspirosphere.tk]

If you can find a computer capable of testing 7778752908943661823213959165079225774884848073919 hashes a second and you manage to live for 13.7 billion years you might stand a chance.

Best of luck  

It's just that I don't feel to be particularly lucky with chances, and I am terrified that someone casually finds my wallet after years that I mine.

BTW: the deep space proggie would be much better if it saved just the keys of filled wallets checking the blockchain.

[BitStick]

You are now the proud owner of several thousand brand new, unused, empty bitcoin addresses.  What will you be doing with them?

Sell them to new forum members 

[DannyHamilton]

If you can find a computer capable of testing 7778752908943661823213959165079225774884848073919 hashes a second and you manage to live for 13.7 billion years you might stand a chance.

Best of luck  

. . . I am terrified that someone casually finds my wallet after years that I mine . . .

Your fear is unfounded.  There is no reason to be terrified of this, but it seems that nobody is going to be able to convince you.

[BurtW]

It's just that I don't feel to be particularly lucky with chances, and I am terrified that someone casually finds my wallet after years that I mine.

BTW: the deep space proggie would be much better if it saved just the keys of filled wallets checking the blockchain.

Still not.. sure.. if.. serious.  Serious?

The point of my sarcasm above "go for it and see if you can do it" is that you will NEVER find someone else's private key using a brute force attack.  NEVER.

You can make your suggestions for improvments in the deep space program in the thread for that program.

[BitStick]

If you can find a computer capable of testing 7778752908943661823213959165079225774884848073919 hashes a second and you manage to live for 13.7 billion years you might stand a chance.

Best of luck  

It's just that I don't feel to be particularly lucky with chances, and I am terrified that someone casually finds my wallet after years that I mine.

BTW: the deep space proggie would be much better if it saved just the keys of filled wallets checking the blockchain.

2^256 is such a mind bogglingly huge number that even if you were to design the perfect computer the laws of nature that restrict information travelling faster than speed c (or the speed of light) would mean even that perfect computer would take thousands of years to crack it. (don't expect this type of computer for sale in radio shack any time soon)

Your paranoia is unjustified 

[conspirosphere.tk]

I'm happy to be reassured by the experts.
I must have been influenced by all those films where the thieves always find a way to open a safe.

[DannyHamilton]

I'm happy to be reassured by the experts.
I must have been influenced by all those films where the thieves always find a way to open a safe.

It will be far easier for the thief to gain access to your computer and look at your private keys then it will be for them to use brute-force calculation to find your private key.

If somebody wants to steal your bitcoins, you need to be MUCH more concerned about them opening the safe where you are storing them than concerned about them figuring out your private key without looking at it.

If you put your private keys in the best safe ever created, and then sent that safe on a rocket into space on a trajectory that would put it in orbit around the next closest star...

It would still be faster and easier for a thief to travel to that star, crack open the safe, and come back to the earth to spend your bitcoins than it would be for them to guess your private key using a brute-force attack.

[memvola]

It would still be faster and easier for a thief to travel to that star, crack open the safe, and come back to the earth to spend your bitcoins than it would be for them to guess your private key using a brute-force attack.

I always like these analogies.

It's just that I don't feel to be particularly lucky with chances

I quite don't know how this bias is labelled, but we tend to fear things that we know the particulars of more than the things that are out of our focus, regardless of specific probabilities. In these situations, I try to focus on numbers and try hard to grasp the meaning of them using familiar analogies.

[DannyHamilton]

It would still be faster and easier for a thief to travel to that star, crack open the safe, and come back to the earth to spend your bitcoins than it would be for them to guess your private key using a brute-force attack.

I always like these analogies.

Note:  Given the amount of energy that would be required to brute force a private key (or set of private keys), Not only would it be faster for the thief to travel to the star and back, it would also be cheaper.  It would cost less to design, build, and launch a rocket capable of interstellar travel with all the resources necessary to sustain life for the round trip, than the cost of the energy necessary of have any chance at all of cracking a randomly generated private key.

So clearly, it will be more cost effective and time effective for any thief to find a way through whatever security you think you've put in place to gain access your wallet than to try to brute-force crack private keys.

[GsR]

it is a waste of time only thinking it