Riddles and Brain-Teasers for Bitcointalk Members (Newbies – Members)

[Amplify]

Let's switch the focus from potential phishing exploits and fake devices back to the recovery phrase. Paul already has a seed. The seed he used in his software wallet. Instead of wasting time in generating and writing down a new seed, why not just recover the wallet with his old seed? The one used with his hot wallet - the software wallet.

Because that way he would lose all the extra level of security that hardware wallets provide.
The advantage of a hardware wallet is that private keys are stored in a secure manner and never leave the device, but are used only to sign transactions. If Paul has already used (or will use) the same seed to generate keys in some other software, all the added security of hardware wallet is wasted.

[1714622579]

1714622579

[1714622579]

1714622579

[1714622579]

1714622579

[1714622579]

1714622579

[Pmalek]

A properly secured seed should never come in contact with the internet or be stored digitally. Paul's seed was used on a software wallet, an app that is considered a hot wallet. If his software or computer experiences a breach, gets hacked, or infected with malware, an attacker could get his hands on the private keys like it was mentioned amongst the replies. Whoever has the private keys/seed, owns the money they protect.

Even if such a breach didn't happen, it's better to create new wallets and get a new seed than using the same seed across multiple software. 1 piece of software represents one item that could be attacked. Replicating the same private information across new apps creates 2 or more attack vectors and ways to lose your coins. Compare that with sharing a secret with one person vs sharing the same secret with 3 people. With 3 people knowing what you know, the chances of someone exposing you have increased greatly.

Riddle #9 is solved!

[Pegiz]

...
Riddle #9 is solved!

Didn't I write the same thing before the others? )
I also wrote that Paul, by not creating a new wallet, but using the old one that he used on the hot wallet, will not get rid of the hot wallet vulnerabilities by transferring his wallet to a new device)
Why was my answer wrong? Maybe the answer was simply not seen?

[Pmalek]

Didn't I write the same thing before the others?

Your answer was incomplete. You mentioned vulnerabilities, but didn't go into more details about what vulnerabilities you are talking about. You also wrote that Paul should "create a new address." He should have generated a new seed and created a completely new wallet. UKprod's answer is more complete. You were also not the first one to answer. roosbit's answer was faster and he mentioned creating a new wallet, not a new address. 

[UKprod]

UKprod's answer is more complete.

Thank you, Pmalek. I look forward to solving more riddles here on your thread. I am from a taxation and legal background and these technical questions provide me a good opportunity to read up and improve upon my understanding of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

[Pmalek]

<Snip>

No problem, I am glad they are of help. Feel free to read the previous eight riddles as well and see if you come to the same conclusions as the members who solved them. There is no need to post your answers in the thread because they are already a thing of the past, but you can do it to practice your knowledge about bitcoin and crypto if you like.

[Pegiz]

Oh yes. I wrote the address. And I wanted to write a wallet. Well, ok, I thought they just didn't see me. Next time I'll try to be more careful if I know the answer.

[roosbit]

Waiting for riddle #10

[Pmalek]

Riddle #10

Pete’s brother sadly passed away in a motorcycle accident. When his younger brother Sean cleaned his room and packed up his stuff, he found a note hidden in his brother’s belongings. “Bitcoin” was written on the top of the paper. The second line contained a string of letters and numbers that began with “bc1”. The last piece of info was another long sequence of numbers and letters that started with “5Kbss8….”

Pete knew his brother was interested in Bitcoin and understood that what he found must be a key to some of his brother’s assets. He learned a little about Bitcoin and understood that he would need to import the found private key in a wallet to access the coins.

Pete downloaded and installed Electrum and begun the process of inserting the private key. But when he added the private key “5Kbss8xxxxxxx…”, the software would open an empty wallet with a different address than the one written down on his brother’s note. The address, which supposedly belongs to his brother, starts with “bc1”, but Electrum only displays one beginning with “1”.


Why is that happening, and what is Pete doing wrong?
Can you help Pete restore the correct wallet?

[Myleschetty]

Riddle #10
Why is that happening, and what is Pete doing wrong?

What happens is that Pete makes the mistake of choosing the wrong derivation path of BIP44 which is non-bech addresses but he supposes to choose BIP84 instead of BIP44.

Can you help Pete restore the correct wallet?

Yes, he can. He just need to start over again by creating a new wallet using the same private keys by selecting the right derivation path
 

[Pmalek]

What happens is that Pete makes the mistake of choosing the wrong derivation path of BIP44 which is non-bech addresses but he supposes to choose BIP84 instead of BIP44.

Pete was never offered an option to adjust the derivation path while importing the private key, so it's not that. The private key is correct, but there could be something wrong with its format. It's like the key is missing something. What does he need to do to get the software to display the correct Bech32 address?

[KingsDen]

Riddle #10

He is doing the wrong thing. Since the private key started with Bc1, he needed to chose Bech32 format specified by BIP 0173. He will do this by prefixing "p2wpkh" to each private key before importing.

[Pmalek]

He will do this by prefixing "p2wpkh" to each private key before importing.

That's correct. Sine the private key is the same for both legacy, nested segwit, and native segwit addresses, you need to specify the correct prefix for the software to know which address and wallet it's supposed to recover.

If you just import the private key as "5Kbss8....", Electrum will recover a wallet with a legacy address.
If you add the prefix "P2WPKH" before the address to make it "P2WPKH:5Kbss8..." Electrum will recover a wallet with a Bech32 address.
Similar to that, the "P2WPKH-P2SH" prefix should be used for nested segwit addresses.

[Marvelman]

He will do this by prefixing "p2wpkh" to each private key before importing.

That's correct. Sine the private key is the same for both legacy, nested segwit, and native segwit addresses, you need to specify the correct prefix for the software to know which address and wallet it's supposed to recover.

If you just import the private key as "5Kbss8....", Electrum will recover a wallet with a legacy address.
If you add the prefix "P2WPKH" before the address to make it "P2WPKH:5Kbss8..." Electrum will recover a wallet with a Bech32 address.
Similar to that, the "P2WPKH-P2SH" prefix should be used for nested segwit addresses.

It is definitely true that you learn something new each and every day here. Thanks for sharing this information, I hadn't read about that before.

[Anguwa]

Riddle #3.

But Peter did everything right. How could this happen?
Where did Peter go wrong?

My opinion is that Peter give too much trust to an unknown person he just meet on social media platform. It's a lesson no to follow too much and random trading signals, and Peter was looking for short cut and easy way to make profit that's why it happen, and also he forget to learn more and gain more knowledge before investing.

What kind of investment group has Andy gotten himself involved in?
Is this a bulletproof way of earning money, or what are the potential dangers?  

Such investors are not to be trusted, they can have a team that can make a crypto coin, pump it to attract some investors after a while they scam the investors. Andy can end up losing the entire money he kept if he follow such investors, they have a target of number of people and total amount of money to be scammed, after that, they luck up the group and no more information about them again.

 

What happened here, and how did Tom lose his bitcoin?
What did he do wrong, and how should he have acted?    

What Tom did wrong was that he downloaded the wrong app. Tom could have make further research on the Electrum wallet, to know how it works, know all the security challenges involved and also how secure it is because there are a lot of scam apps in play store, and this types of scam wallets are what lead Tom to loose his bitcoin.

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged, fixed broken quotes]

[Pmalek]

<Snip>

I was wondering why is this person answering riddles that have been solved a long time ago, but then I checked the trust feedback that The Pharmacist posted about you. Everything is clear now. I guess we can't expect anything better from someone like you.