hacking, why is btc addresses easier to hack than regular ones (email, bank)

[Bluengold341]

how come btc addresses are more at risk?

[Experia]

where did you get this information?

AFAIK, you will only get hacked if your device that have your wallet got infected with malware, by that the hackers will have access on your wallet and spend your coins

[DannyHamilton]

how come btc addresses are more at risk?

Nonsense.

Bitcoin addresses are public.  Every bitcoin address that has ever been used to receive bitcoins can ALL be found in the public blockchain. There is nothing hidden or encrypted about a bitcoin address.

Perhaps you are asking about calculating a private key that is associated with a bitcoin address?  In that case, it is effectively impossible as long as the private key is generated from a random enough source. Therefore, your question would still be nonsense.

Perhaps you are asking about STEALING a private key that is associated with a bitcoin address?  In that case, it's important to recognize 2 things.

First, that it is extremely difficult to steal a properly secured private key.

Second, that there is a very big financial incentive to steal a private key, so LOTS of people will try.

Email passwords are stolen all the time, but if your email password is stolen, then someone can read your email or pretend to be you and send email from your account.  There is some benefit to the thief, but gaining a significant financial benefit from an email address is complicated.

Bank passwords are stolen all the time, but if your bank password is stolen then the bank can cancel or reverse most transactions as long as they are discovered soon enough.  There is some benefit to the thief, but gaining a significant financial benefit from an bank passord is complicated. Since bank transfers are centralized and easily traceable, there is significant risk to the thief when attempting to acquire access to the funds.

Bitcoins are valuable, it is nearly impossible to cancel or reverse a properly formed transaction after it has been sent, and since the network is decentralized it is very difficult to determine who has access to the bitcoins once they are taken.

The combination of large financial incentive and irreversible transaction draws a lot of thieves to try to steal private keys or trick/scam people into sending their bitcoins.

[Adelajda]

how come btc addresses are more at risk?

The risk of losing your private key is same as losing your credit card and banking details,if your system is compromised then the hacker could take control of your system,so every private information is at risk,so always remember to protect your system with the necessary tools available and make sure you use the licensed software rather than using cracked software.

[swogerino]

how come btc addresses are more at risk?

Nonsense.

Bitcoin addresses are public.  Every bitcoin address that has ever been used to receive bitcoins cal ALL be found in the public blockchain. There is nothing hidden or encrypted about a bitcoin address.

Perhaps you are asking about calculating a private key that is associated with a bitcoin address?  In that case, it is effectively impossible as long as the private key is generated from a random enough source. Therefore, your question would still be nonsense.

Perhaps you are asking about STEALING a private key that is associated with a bitcoin address?  In that case, it's important to recognize 2 things.

First, that it is extremely difficult to steal a properly secured private key.

Second, that there is a very big financial incentive to steal a private key, so LOTS of people will try.

Email passwords are stolen all the time, but if your email password is stolen, then someone can read your email or pretend to be you and send email from your account.  There is some benefit to the thief, but gaining a significant financial benefit from an email address is complicated.

Bank passwords are stolen all the time, but if your bank password is stolen then the bank can cancel or reverse most transactions as long as they are discovered soon enough.  There is some benefit to the thief, but gaining a significant financial benefit from an bank passord is complicated. Since bank transfers are centralized and easily traceable, there is significant risk for the thief attempting to acquire access to the funds.

Bitcoins are valuable, it is nearly impossible to cancel or reverse a properly formed transaction once it has been sent, and since the network is decentralized it is very difficult to determine who has access to the bitcoins one they are taken.

The combination of large financial incentive and irreversible transaction draws a lot of thieves to try to steal private keys or trick/scam people into sending their bitcoins.

That is a good in depth explanation why stealing a private key is extremely difficult, but not impossible if you the user make errors. In order to avoid errors education is key. I think you should start from the official website of bitcoin here "https://bitcoin.org/en/secure-your-wallet"

[european_guy]

Imagine you have some sneaky spyware on your PC that makes a screenshot every 10 seconds and sends it to the attacker. The moment you create a wallet and write down your 12 secret words, he has them too. Now he only has to wait until there's big money in the wallet aaaaaand it's gone.

The thing is, you can hardly be 100 % sure that your PC is not compromised.

[DannyHamilton]

- snip -
The thing is, you can hardly be 100 % sure that your PC is not compromised.

The good news is that, if you are concerned about security, you can create and use your wallet on a computer that is NEVER connected to the internet, so even if you have "sneaky spyware" "that makes a screenshot every 10 seconds" it can't ever "send it to the attacker".

You can't do that with your email or bank account, can you?

[european_guy]

Are you using the quotes to make fun of me? Why "if you are concerned"?. Everybody should be concerned. It's everybody's responsibility to secure their wallets and most people don't know how hard it is to have a secure desktop wallet.

1. Who has a computer that's never online?
2. How many users are aware of the risks?
3. How exactly do you send a transaction from an offline computer? Could it be that it's complicated?

[freebutcaged]

Imagine you have some sneaky spyware on your PC that makes a screenshot every 10 seconds and sends it to the attacker. The moment you create a wallet and write down your 12 secret words, he has them too. Now he only has to wait until there's big money in the wallet aaaaaand it's gone.

The thing is, you can hardly be 100 % sure that your PC is not compromised.

Unless you are mentally retarded and have near zero IQ score, otherwise I'm pretty sure that you could know easily if you were infected mate.

Since most people use windows, don't you know how to use the event logs, event viewer? if you want to see how safe are Bitcoin addresses just

Go and take a look at directory.io there you can have access to all the private keys, just remember every page you open it saves the

Data(keys+addresses)on your hard drive and you might need to have a hard drive with the size of the moon literally to store all of them to check

Later for addresses with big amounts.

[HI-TEC99]

1. Who has a computer that's never online?

You can use an offline linux live CD rather than an entire computer

2. How many users are aware of the risks?

The more Bitcoins a user has the more likely he will have educated himself about the risks.

3. How exactly do you send a transaction from an offline computer? Could it be that it's complicated?

You can use an offline smart phone, or camera to transfer unsigned transactions using QR codes, or you can use a flash drive to transfer files containing unsigned transactions.

Your online computer creates an unsigned transaction. You transfer that to your offline computer using a QR code or flash drive. Your offline wallet signs the transaction using its private key. Afterwards you transfer the transaction back to an online computer using a phone/camera/flash drive, and broadcast it using your online wallet.

It's safe because your offline wallet's private key is never exposed to the internet.

[european_guy]

Go and take a look at directory.io there you can have access to all the private keys, just remember every page you open it saves the Data(keys+addresses)on your hard drive and you might need to have a hard drive with the size of the moon literally to store all of them to check Later for addresses with big amounts.

Wow, what is this? Some kind of rainbow table for BTC addresses? Please explain. Why is there only one address for each private key?

Also thanks to HI-TEC99 for the helpful (and inoffensive!) answers.

[achow101]

Wow, what is this? Some kind of rainbow table for BTC addresses? Please explain. Why is there only one address for each private key?

Directory.io is not a rainbow table nor is it an exploit or anything malicious. Their FAQ: http://directory.io/faq pretty much explains what the website is. TL;DR it's satire and a joke. The private keys are real but you can't actually lookup the private key for an address and you can't actually search through all of the private keys in the lifetime of the universe.

Every single Bitcoin private key is just an integer from 1 to 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFEBAAEDCE6AF48A03BBFD25E8CD0364140 (1.1579209 * 10^77 in decimal) inclusive. This means that technically, all private keys are known by everyone. However, there are so many private keys that finding one that has Bitcoin to spend is basically impossible, especially since private keys are generated randomly. With good random number generators, two people will never be able to generate the same private key simply because the keyspace is so unfathomably massive.

What directory.io does is they just figure out what number private keys the page you are looking at should be showing (as in which integers since a fixed number of keys fit per page) and displays those. They physically cannot have a database which stores all of the private keys and their respective addresses, it would be too computationally intensive to generate (and take way too long to do that) and the hard drive space for such a database is not available, it is too large. Furthermore, the odds of you stumbling upon a private key which has Bitcoin on it is extremely small too.