Gaining Access To Your Private Keys From Your Public Key - Possible?

[Bttzed03]

I've had this in mind before but never really delve into it that much and then I came across this article https://thecurrencyanalytics.com/5000/reverse-engineering-public-keys-of-crypto-can-soon-be-a-threat/

It is about reverse engineering, where the private keys which represent the control you have over your wallet. The public key is essentially your wallet which holds your crypto balances.

And therefore I think that is a real credible threat. Bitcoin is a public ledger; therefore, so you can go out and see the public keys which are holding the massive balances and you could go out and target the several hundreds or thousands of Bitcoin and say I’m going to spend my effort on the computing resource in order to reverse engineer the private key from the public key, which is exposed. I think that is even a near-term threat.

I do not know what are the chances of someone gaining access to your private keys from knowing your public keys or if it is even possible at all. To all technical guys here, please share your opinion/s.


I've already posted a similar topic in another forum before posting here.

[cabron]

Not possible. If it is, everyone who did post their public key must have lost their funds already. Most of the time, those EOSbet holders are publishing their public key as sort of a Memo address inorder to receive tokens from the sender. Should we expect heist sooner? Public key is for encrypting like checking the sign message or so.

[proTECH77]

To my best ability on Blockchain technology is much impossible for such hack to happen, although i can be proven wrong. Public key differs from what Private keys stands for. Few months back i did a close research on the two key to see how relatively close the two keys were but couldn't find a substantial evidence, although they are but cannot be check side by side.   

[Osarman]

Public key and private key are 2 separate entities and one cannot have access to your private key by having access to your public key. Public key are used to monitor transactions done in your account, that means if anyone have access to your public key, they can see all what you are doing in crypto but can't have access to your coin, but anyone who have access to your private key has full control of your coin.

[Argoo]

The public address of the wallet and the private key of it are two different codes that have no interconnection between them. Therefore, knowing the public address, it is impossible in any way to access the secret key of this wallet. Both of these sets of numbers and letters fall into one purse in a purely random fashion.

[butka]

The article in question is a good example of spreading misinformation.

And therefore I think that is a real credible threat. Bitcoin is a public ledger; therefore, so you can go out and see the public keys which are holding the massive balances and you could go out and target the several hundreds or thousands of Bitcoin and say I’m going to spend my effort on the computing resource in order to reverse engineer the private key from the public key, which is exposed. I think that is even a near-term threat.

First of all, it is not true that the Bitcoin's public ledger contains public keys. It contains bitcoin addresses which are 160 bit hashes of public keys:

A Bitcoin address is a 160-bit hash of the public portion of a public/private ECDSA keypair.

source: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses

Until the bitcoins associated with these addresses are spent (by providing the corresponding signatures), you can't even know the public key, let alone the private one.

And even if you knew the public key, you would need immense computer power and who knows how many tens of thousands of years of using that computing power to deduce the private key.

[fosco333]

NO bro, it is impossible. If it was possible, then the coins that trapped in the wallets would be able to be retrieved back.
Cryptocurrency is one way encryption and there is no way you can do reverse engineering on it.
That is why we must save our private key so we won't lose it.