Elliptic Curve DSA ?

[LeGaulois]

sorry for the title..

I got lost on Wikipedia, (as it happens to every regular wiki reader), and at the end of an article
about ECDSA it says the following:

Political concerns: the trustworthiness of NIST-produced curves being questioned after revelations that the NSA willingly inserts backdoors into software, hardware components and published standards were made; well-known cryptographers[11] have expressed[12][13] doubts about how the NIST curves were designed, and voluntary tainting has already been proved in the past.[14][15]

Security dangers of the NIST curves
https://www.hyperelliptic.org/tanja/vortraege/20130531.pdf

The NSA Is Breaking Most Encryption on the Internet
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/the_nsa_is_brea.html#c1675929

choosing safe curves for elliptic-curve cryptography
http://safecurves.cr.yp.to/rigid.html

The Strange Story of Dual_EC_DRBG
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_strange_sto.html

NSA Efforts to Evade Encryption Technology Damaged U.S. Cryptography Standard
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nsa-nist-encryption-scandal/



Do you call this outdated now, conspiracy theory by Alex Jones, or highly possible?

I just would like to remind you about
National Security Agency Office of Information Security Research and Technology Cryptology Division
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm

What do you think about this concern

[RGBKey]

IIRC Bitcoin's curve (secp256k1) was chosen because it was unlikely that the NSA had a backdoor in the curve. But I am definitely concerned about the curves used elsewhere.

[LeGaulois]

oops, you're right, sorry, I found it on the bitcoin wiki

But, while searching for my question I found some news titles  about Snowden claiming the NSA is already starting to syphon off bitcoin users

  what came to my mind was.
NIST the dev. >> Bitcoin the ICO >> Satoshi the campaign manager>> NSA

[nc50lc]

Forget the News, most of those are FUDs.

And NSA, even they can manage to have a reasonable computing power to bruteforce bitcoin private keys,
they can't totally do this in an alarming rate.
They will be needing an out-of-this-world supercomputer to "siphon" every highly funded bitcoin addresses.

[HeRetiK]

But, while searching for my question I found some news titles  about Snowden claiming the NSA is already starting to syphon off bitcoin users

Maybe we've been reading different headlines, but from what I recall the NSA is "merely" tracking Bitcoin transactions, possibly trying to de-anonymize users. Because of course they do, they're the NSA after all. Also they are unfortunately not the only entity to do so, but it was pretty much clear from the beginning that this would happen due to the transparency of Bitcoin's ledger.

[wwzsocki]

But, while searching for my question I found some news titles  about Snowden claiming the NSA is already starting to syphon off bitcoin users

Maybe we've been reading different headlines, but from what I recall the NSA is "merely" tracking Bitcoin transactions, possibly trying to de-anonymize users. Because of course they do, they're the NSA after all. Also they are unfortunately not the only entity to do so, but it was pretty much clear from the beginning that this would happen due to the transparency of Bitcoin's ledger.

Are you sure that they are tracking bitcoin transactions to de-anonymize users? Have you any proof, link, something? I know that NSA is the evil of this world but why should they track BTC only and all cryptos? There are quite a few millionaires invested and holding other cryptocurrencies. Why only BTC? If NSA is after big wallets they will know about all of them, I think.

[pebwindkraft]

...
Are you sure that they are tracking bitcoin transactions to de-anonymize users? Have you any proof, link, something? I know that NSA is the evil of this world but why should they track BTC only and all cryptos? There are quite a few millionaires invested and holding other cryptocurrencies. Why only BTC? If NSA is after big wallets they will know about all of them, I think.

I think his thread is going into a wild speculation.
The purpose of the NSA is to certainly protect the „land of the free“, and they are not behind some millionaires having cryptos. They are behind players, which don’t respect the rules, or might pose a thread or somehow a danger for the interests of the US and their integrity. Why would they want to get the money of some crypto holders?

Whereas I don‘t like the behavior of people in this organization (like in any other large orgs as well), people tend to believe they have power and use it over (more or less) innocent individuals. Like getting shot by a policeman, cause you have African roots... this is what makes us fear these organizations, especially if we have something to hide (taxes are a recurring pattern).

If they had really hacked the curves with backdoors, then the millionaires are the lowest level of interest. They could do much better with this power.

[HeRetiK]

But, while searching for my question I found some news titles  about Snowden claiming the NSA is already starting to syphon off bitcoin users

Maybe we've been reading different headlines, but from what I recall the NSA is "merely" tracking Bitcoin transactions, possibly trying to de-anonymize users. Because of course they do, they're the NSA after all. Also they are unfortunately not the only entity to do so, but it was pretty much clear from the beginning that this would happen due to the transparency of Bitcoin's ledger.

Are you sure that they are tracking bitcoin transactions to de-anonymize users? Have you any proof, link, something? I know that NSA is the evil of this world but why should they track BTC only and all cryptos? There are quite a few millionaires invested and holding other cryptocurrencies. Why only BTC? If NSA is after big wallets they will know about all of them, I think.

Why else would they track Bitcoin transactions?

Here's one of many articles regarding the Snowden leak and NSA's monitoring of Bitcoin users:
https://www.coindesk.com/nsa-reportedly-eyes-to-scrap-bitcoins-anonymity/

They are not the only ones analyzing money flows on the Bitcoin blockchain:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/irs-uses-chainalysis-to-track-down-bitcoin-tax-cheats

No one ever claimed that only Bitcoin is being monitored. Alts may very well be affected as well.

Whereas I don‘t like the behavior of people in this organization (like in any other large orgs as well), people tend to believe they have power and use it over (more or less) innocent individuals. Like getting shot by a policeman, cause you have African roots... this is what makes us fear these organizations, especially if we have something to hide (taxes are a recurring pattern).

Any organization that has the resources at hand to monitor the bulk of global internet traffic wields a significant amount of power. There's no way to sugarcoat that.

The problem with such organizations is not the surveillance and manipulation of the individual -- it's the surveillance and manipulation of the masses. Hand this power to the wrong person and you hand them the control over a whole population past the point of no return.