Cheaper In Bitcoins | Blog Post | Topic: Bitcoin and Security: How Bitcoin is..

[Xenland]

http://cheaperinbitcoins.com/blog/index.php?act=read&post_id=2

[1714966894]

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[Etlase2]

SHA2 may be (somewhat) secure against QC, ECDSA is not.

"However, since this is the same encryption used by major banks and other payment methods, if the encryption itself were ever 'cracked', those institutions could be shut down and vulnerable for weeks. Bitcoin would be secure again within only hours or days."

You are attributing favorable opinion to bitcoin and disfavorable opinion to the banking system. This is a biased statement. Banks would be able to resolve any stolen funds or whatever, bitcoin would not. Every wallet in bitcoin is public, all banking "wallets" are private. There is no indication that switching to a new hashing or signature algorithm will be an easy or quick process.

You should probably do your own research in lieu of channeling the heavily biased wiki.


edit: I did read the informative post you did link to at the bottom on the forums regarding cryptography. However, the post is in error. Addresses are hashed with RIPEMD160 which means you have 80 bits of effective protection, a hell of a lot less than 128 bits. I don't know enough about the protocol specifics to comment on how difficult it would be to get the public key from transactions and such.

[Xenland]

This is one of the reasons why Bitcoin wont take off its because people are getting too complex with it to new people before they even know what a bitcoin address is were slamming with all this nerd information that no layman understands anyways.... this is what i told everyone on reddit.

These articles are aimed at non-nerdy people in a language they understand. I don't write these articles but I'm actively involved with the writer who does it and he does alot of PR work on trying to figure out way to "clearly" explain Bitcoin advantages to the everyday layman.

Anyways. The point is to get Bitcoins name out there... we can educate everyone in a precise manner once they are on board but right now we don't need to confuse the bagezus out of everyone with cold-hard-facts that they don't understand.

Reddit link: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/m5v0y/cheaper_in_bitcoins_com_releases_2nd_blog_post/


Thanks for your reply Etlase2 but the point is mainly to get people intrigued instead of constant "fear" that bitocin is complicated.

[Etlase2]

The explanations could have been done without the bitcoin bias. It only undermines what you are trying to say.

[Jan]

http://cheaperinbitcoins.com/blog/index.php?act=read&post_id=2

Bitcoins are not encrypted. Bitcoin does not use encryption at all. Cryptography yes, encryption no.

[cypherdoc]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3008.msg565787#msg565787

[Xenland]

http://cheaperinbitcoins.com/blog/index.php?act=read&post_id=2

Bitcoins are not encrypted. Bitcoin does not use encryption at all. Cryptography yes, encryption no.

Wikipedia says "No"



http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography

[Etlase2]

Encryption is a form of cryptography, not all cryptography is encryption.

[Xenland]

Encryption is a form of cryptography, not all cryptography is encryption.

See image above.

[Etlase2]

It is a picture explaining symmetric key cryptography; that is not the type of cryptography used by bitcoin. Bitcoin uses a subset of asymmetric cryptography called digital signatures. The data must be unencrypted for a digital signature to prove anything.

[johnj]

I helped write these.

Xenland and I got to talking about what the everyman thinks about Bitcoin.  So we've been working together to address common questions in non-technical lingo. For instance, people know what 'encryption' means, but might not be familiar with 'cryptography', while they essentially communicate the same thing: "fancy computer number magic that secures stuff". The goal was to also avoid being longwinded, so yes some accuracy is lost due to compressing big questions into just a handful of sentences. I tried to keep it at a 'pamphlet' level.

Yes, it is biased.  It's not intended to be a complete and total disclaimer of all the innerworkings of bitcoin - they're intended to be brief introductions addressing common questions, in a way that doesn't scare people away. No, it isn't a work of art.  There are probably a lot of other people out there who could write a laymans written 'faq' better, but I haven't come across it.  So with Xenlands help I've started.  Anyone is more than welcome to build upon them.

If you already know that bitcoin uses cryptography or that you can't compare flop/s to the bitcoin network, then you're not the targeted audience.  But in that case I hope the 'bite-size' portions are easy-to-remember talking-points, if you ever find yourself in a conversation with people who may not be as technically inclined.

[Xenland]

It is a picture explaining symmetric key cryptography; that is not the type of cryptography used by bitcoin. Bitcoin uses a subset of asymmetric cryptography called digital signatures. The data must be unencrypted for a digital signature to prove anything.

Are you listening to your self?

[Etlase2]

Unencrypted as in, "not encrypted". This really is not that hard of a concept. Unencrypted is not synonymous with decrypted.

[Xenland]

Unencrypted as in, "not encrypted". This really is not that hard of a concept. Unencrypted is not synonymous with decrypted.

I think the word your looking for is plain text.

The dictionary is telling me prefixes of "un" and "de" me to reverse or undo, care to explain how you reverse or undo plain text?

[avoid3d]

Unencrypted as in, "not encrypted". This really is not that hard of a concept. Unencrypted is not synonymous with decrypted.

I think the word your looking for is plain text.

The dictionary is telling me prefixes of "un" and "de" me to reverse or undo, care to explain how you reverse or undo plain text?

Are you being deliberately difficult?

Bitcoin does not use encrypted, it uses digital signatures which must be not-encrypted to be meaningful

As for the English of it all:

If a is plain text, then a is not encrypted, another way of saying this is a is unencrypted

a = 'hello' < this is unencrypted information - read not-encrypted

b = encrypt(a) < this is called encryption

b is now the encrypted version of a, b is encrypted

c = decrypt(b) < this is called decription

c is a depcrypted version of b, c is unencypted - it is not-encrypted

[Etlase2]

Actually, plaintext implies it will be encrypted, whereas all data used in bitcoin is not.

Cleartext, by contrast, refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted (that is, 'in the clear').

Did your dictionary not tell you that "un" can mean "not" as well? If so, you should probably look into getting a new dictionary. Either way, the cryptography community uses them separately, and in fact unencrypted is not even considered a word by any dictionary I checked. Probably because the meaning of unencrypt would not be a proper verb, as there is no action. Funnily enough, unencrypted is not flagged as being misspelled by my browser, but unencrypt is. Decrypt, on the other hand, has a universal and unambiguous meaning and is a proper verb. Perhaps that's why unencrypted was the logical, colloquial choice for meaning "not encrypted."

[Xenland]

Oh dear. Just everyone chill out i'm just teasing....

[avoid3d]

Actually, plaintext implies it will be encrypted, whereas all data used in bitcoin is not.

Cleartext, by contrast, refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted (that is, 'in the clear').

Did your dictionary not tell you that "un" can mean "not" as well? If so, you should probably look into getting a new dictionary. Either way, the cryptography community uses them separately, and in fact unencrypted is not even considered a word by any dictionary I checked. Probably because the meaning of unencrypt would not be a proper verb, as there is no action. Funnily enough, unencrypted is not flagged as being misspelled by my browser, but unencrypt is. Decrypt, on the other hand, has a universal and unambiguous meaning and is a proper verb. Perhaps that's why unencrypted was the logical, colloquial choice for meaning "not encrypted."

I noticed that about the spell check too