Has the NSA already broken bitcoin?

[BurtW]

Is it possible that not all Bitcoin addresses are equally difficult to reverse engineer?

   No.

Are "even" numbers less secure than "odd"?

   No.

Does a higher percentage of alpha characters (rather than numeric) represent higher security?

   No.

Are there portions of an elliptical curve that are computationally more difficult?

   No.

[hashman]

Is it possible that not all Bitcoin addresses are equally difficult to reverse engineer?

   No.

Does a higher percentage of alpha characters (rather than numeric) represent higher security?

   No.

Are there portions of an elliptical curve that are computationally more difficult?

   No.

Mostly true but I wouldn't use 1A5eBnS16ZGdyX2HqXfXzA84BEZJejQ4pG for example.  There are those people who have found that their private key was literally reverse engineered (cough, brainwallet).  Funny how low entropy is really tough to see after it's been hit by a couple hashes. 

[BurtW]

Assuming the private key is generated using a secure random number generator with a good source of entropy then:

Is it possible that not all Bitcoin addresses are equally difficult to reverse engineer?

   No.

Are "even" numbers less secure than "odd"?

   No.

Does a higher percentage of alpha characters (rather than numeric) represent higher security?

   No.

Are there portions of an elliptical curve that are computationally more difficult?

   No.

Fixed.

[Ignition75]

Schneier has been emphatically telling whoever will listen lately to avoid elliptic-curve crypto engineering, or to increase the key sizes, due to math tricks involved he believes are probably ripe for mathematical breakthroughs. Most ECC is patented anyways by Certicom and requires licensing. The NSA has been pushing ECC lately as well in their Suite B protection which is probably Suite (B)ackdoored so they can spoof signatures and handshakes.

Still I doubt the NSA would want anything to do with bitcoin besides use it to pay their own spies in Iran and Russia."Comrade, here is your 1000BTC for political blackmail purposes. Please get picture of Putin wearing lipstick passed out drunk in a dress".

My thoughts exactly, Crypto will be used by the government just as much as everyone else, anonymous Crypto that is...

[ensurance982]

Just read this disturbing article, based on recent leaks from Snowden:

http://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-crack-undermine-internet-encryption

The article talks about the NSA responding to the rise in popularity of internet encryption by, among other things, deliberately weakening the algorithms in use to give themselves a back door to decrypt data. Bitcoin relies on SHA-256, originally created by the NSA. Perhaps there is a weakness that an organization with the resources of the NSA is able to exploit.

If so, that would explain why the major governments around the world seem to tolerate bitcoin. They know they can break it whenever they want. Preferable after the cartels and terrorists get comfortable and start relying on it.

'decrypt' it? What are they trying to 'decrypt' about Bitcoin? If people are writing such things, they immediately show that they don't seem to know Jack about Bitcoin. They'd need to reverse one-way mathematical functions (hashing) or severely facilitating brute-force attempts by using holes in those functions (whether or not they may be there remains to be seen)

[HarmonLi]

This would be pretty easy to test. Just get a bunch of friends to start exchanging encrypted messages about bombing an embassy or govt office. If these douche-bags can break it, they'd be on you like white on rice.

Haha, that's actually a nice thing to do But you would only see if the encryption you're using is flawed or broken. It wouldn't say a whole lot about the mathematical hashing functions of Bitcoin that protect it! You'd need to test or break them!

[gtraah]

Just read this disturbing article, based on recent leaks from Snowden:

http://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-crack-undermine-internet-encryption

The article talks about the NSA responding to the rise in popularity of internet encryption by, among other things, deliberately weakening the algorithms in use to give themselves a back door to decrypt data. Bitcoin relies on SHA-256, originally created by the NSA. Perhaps there is a weakness that an organization with the resources of the NSA is able to exploit.

If so, that would explain why the major governments around the world seem to tolerate bitcoin. They know they can break it whenever they want. Preferable after the cartels and terrorists get comfortable and start relying on it.

'decrypt' it? What are they trying to 'decrypt' about Bitcoin? If people are writing such things, they immediately show that they don't seem to know Jack about Bitcoin. They'd need to reverse one-way mathematical functions (hashing) or severely facilitating brute-force attempts by using holes in those functions (whether or not they may be there remains to be seen)

Man I have a feeling this community is its own worse nightmare, you are all going to conspiracy bitcoin to death lol, with all these posts from the outside trolls trying to plant seeds in all the paranoid heads around, and believe me there are many paranoid people here, I just hope 99.9% of the people here are smart enough not to believe in all this non-sense troll articles.

[X7]

Go away you IMF hired troll - nobody has time to taste your tears.

[Mobius]

Just read this disturbing article, based on recent leaks from Snowden:

http://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-crack-undermine-internet-encryption

The article talks about the NSA responding to the rise in popularity of internet encryption by, among other things, deliberately weakening the algorithms in use to give themselves a back door to decrypt data. Bitcoin relies on SHA-256, originally created by the NSA. Perhaps there is a weakness that an organization with the resources of the NSA is able to exploit.

If so, that would explain why the major governments around the world seem to tolerate bitcoin. They know they can break it whenever they want. Preferable after the cartels and terrorists get comfortable and start relying on it.

'decrypt' it? What are they trying to 'decrypt' about Bitcoin? If people are writing such things, they immediately show that they don't seem to know Jack about Bitcoin. They'd need to reverse one-way mathematical functions (hashing) or severely facilitating brute-force attempts by using holes in those functions (whether or not they may be there remains to be seen)

I would seriously doubt that there are unknown "holes" in Bitcoin. Both nefarious actors and the Bitcoin devs are constantly looking for potential holes in the protocol to either exploit or fix. If the "NSA" were to "hack" Bitcoin then a specific person would have to had done it, and if this was the case the person would have a huge incentive to exploit it for personal gain.

[vesperwillow]

I would seriously doubt that there are unknown "holes" in Bitcoin. Both nefarious actors and the Bitcoin devs are constantly looking for potential holes in the protocol to either exploit or fix. If the "NSA" were to "hack" Bitcoin then a specific person would have to had done it, and if this was the case the person would have a huge incentive to exploit it for personal gain.

The NSA does a lot which can provide great personal gain for any of the individuals working for them. The trick is to keep the workers happy.

[Hustle2survive]

why so many nsa threads today

[vesperwillow]

This one is from last year.. who knows.

[JimClone]

If the NSA had all this amazing survelliance equipment then they already have everybodies private keys so therefore you should hack the NSA 

[BTCevo]

The NSA is only working for one country though right? they couldn't possibly affect us in other countries could they?

[vesperwillow]

The NSA is only working for one country though right? they couldn't possibly affect us in other countries could they?

Working 'for' one country, or working 'in' ? Their primary allegience is the US, but they gather intel from all over the globe, and I'm sure use it as leverage with other governments to their advantage.

[Spinti89]

i agree with "vesperwillow"
It doesn't matter where their from... they have access to all the intel

[taylortyler]

If the NSA can crack encryption, and can crack Tor, it would be in their best interests to have the public believe that they cannot do such things. These people specialize in misinformation, so when the NSA says they "will never be able to deanonymize all Tor users all the time," I wouldn't be so quick to believe it.

[dKingston]

I would seriously doubt that there are unknown "holes" in Bitcoin. Both nefarious actors and the Bitcoin devs are constantly looking for potential holes in the protocol to either exploit or fix. If the "NSA" were to "hack" Bitcoin then a specific person would have to had done it, and if this was the case the person would have a huge incentive to exploit it for personal gain.

The NSA does a lot which can provide great personal gain for any of the individuals working for them. The trick is to keep the workers happy.

This would be very unethical for any entity to do. Companies do give some level of fringe benefits like free goods/services of what the entity produces but something like this would be crossing the line. This would be an abuse of power.

[Mobius]

I would seriously doubt that there are unknown "holes" in Bitcoin. Both nefarious actors and the Bitcoin devs are constantly looking for potential holes in the protocol to either exploit or fix. If the "NSA" were to "hack" Bitcoin then a specific person would have to had done it, and if this was the case the person would have a huge incentive to exploit it for personal gain.

The NSA does a lot which can provide great personal gain for any of the individuals working for them. The trick is to keep the workers happy.

This would be very unethical for any entity to do. Companies do give some level of fringe benefits like free goods/services of what the entity produces but something like this would be crossing the line. This would be an abuse of power.

I agree. This would be very unethical. It would be similar to a loan officer approving his own loan. There was actually a scandal about employees at the NSA spying on their love interests via various NSA programs, the employees did not make out well in terms of their careers or their security clearance.

[vesperwillow]

If the NSA can crack encryption, and can crack Tor, it would be in their best interests to have the public believe that they cannot do such things. These people specialize in misinformation, so when the NSA says they "will never be able to deanonymize all Tor users all the time," I wouldn't be so quick to believe it.

The public is usually so uncaring about the truth it doesn't usually matter, as long as they get their entertainment.

Americans are generally foolish sheep, too desirous to believe the happy fairy tales about their government, and incapable of handling the reality. As long as they stay entertained and appeased, they'll sign away all of their freedoms and rights.