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June 14, 2011, 04:25:37 AM |
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I've seen many youtube videos recently and other articles talking about how all this computing power is being used for something more sinister. For example here is a snippet from mike Rivero's Article. I'm wondering how to counter these accusations from my friends who refer me to these videos/articles
(from mike riveros article)
Here is my problem.
The BitCoin mining software uses a LOT of computer power for what we are told is a simple peer-to-peer cash system. Peer-to-peer file sharing does not require that kind of raw compute power. Neither does the level of digital signing the peer-to-peer cash system claims to use. There is a huge amount of computer power being expended on other unknown tasks. Some articles on just how BitCoins are awarded speak of "solving blocks", and therein lies my concern. As a part of the mining for BitCoins, a huge amount of computer power is being spent on cryptographic processing of these blocks, and nobody really knows for certain what is inside those blocks.
I am concerned that the BitCoin miner, along with passing BitCoins hither and yon, is actually a vast distributed code key-breaker, as I cannot think of anything else requiring that kind of computer power (as NSA's rumored expenditure on exaflop computers suggests). With enough raw computer power chained together in a few million BitCoin users, brute-force breaking of the keys of asymmetric encryption becomes achievable, even convenient. Great if the perps are reading Iran's government communications or congressional "Sexting" messages, but not so great if the target is banks, SSH transactions, https, utilities, your corporate server, and secured emails.
Modern computer crime has become very sophisticated, and cyber-criminals (and the NSA) would not hesitate to exploit a popular new peer-to-peer cash system to create a vast distributed key-breaking system.
--- I don't know THAT much about bitcoin so I figured I'd ask you guys.
Thanks
MIke
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