Is there any risk if many receiving addresses are accidentally revealed?

[LongTimeAgo]

If a large amount of unused receiving addresses were accidentally revealed (say 50 or so), is there any risk to the funds that may be stored in that wallet? Assuming the revealed addresses remain unused. I'm wondering if there's an increased risk of reverse engineering the private key if enough public addresses are known.

[1713933632]

1713933632

[1713933632]

1713933632

[1713933632]

1713933632

[1713933632]

1713933632

[1713933632]

1713933632

[ranochigo]

No. There is no relation between the individual addresses other that they can be deterministically generated using a single seed, assuming HD wallets. It is fairly easy to determine the various addresses generated by the same seed with some degree of certainty by their spending patterns.

It's not possible to get the private keys with your addresses in the first place. Reversing the public keys would be infeasible right now as well.

If you're using a HD wallet and accidentally reveal your non-hardened master public key and a child private key, it'll be possible to get the master private key using the combination of both.

[Charles-Tim]

If the addresses has been used in a transaction before, it will reduce privacy, but that does not mean the security is reduced if you protect the Bitcoin the addresses are controlling very well. If the addresses are not used, and will not be used, no security is affected, also privacy is not affected.

What should not be known to others which can be used to compromised your wallet and steal your bitcoin are seed phrase and passphrase if included, seed, master private key and private keys, which means these sensitive information should not be revealed to others for the safety of your coin. While master public keys should also not be revealed to other for privacy reasons.

[Dave1]

If a large amount of unused receiving addresses were accidentally revealed (say 50 or so), is there any risk to the funds that may be stored in that wallet? Assuming the revealed addresses remain unused. I'm wondering if there's an increased risk of reverse engineering the private key if enough public addresses are known.

No, currently there are not hardware that have enough computing power to reverse engineer your public address to extract your private key.

Take note that I say currently, because there's a lot of discussions that QC someday can be a threat. In any case you can read about it in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5157696.0

[pooya87]

If a large amount of unused receiving addresses were accidentally revealed (say 50 or so)

You can produce millions of "unused" bitcoin addresses per second. There is nothing to reveal here, addresses are just hashes and they neither pose any security risk nor any privacy risk. Addresses, similar to public keys, are meant to be "public".
Even if the addresses (the 50 you said) is from a wallet it still only poses a privacy risk since those addresses would be linked then.

[mk4]

No, there wouldn't be any security risks, regardless if the addresses revealed are used or unused. And like others have said, it's only a privacy concern(which isn't good, mind you). Probably the only security risks I could think of, is that if all the coins you personally own(on your various addresses) has been revealed to other people near you. You could be a victim of a $5 wrench attack[1].

[1] https://cryptosec.info/wrench-attack/

[jrrsparkles]

If a large amount of unused receiving addresses were accidentally revealed (say 50 or so), is there any risk to the funds that may be stored in that wallet? Assuming the revealed addresses remain unused. I'm wondering if there's an increased risk of reverse engineering the private key if enough public addresses are known.

Its already available for the public to see, which addresses contains how much amount of bitcoin but no one can access the address without the private keys so there is no issue for the funds stored in it, but exchanges and governments may track if you if those addresses linked to the transaction from the exchange wallet.

[aysg76]

If a large amount of unused receiving addresses were accidentally revealed (say 50 or so), is there any risk to the funds that may be stored in that wallet? Assuming the revealed addresses remain unused. I'm wondering if there's an increased risk of reverse engineering the private key if enough public addresses are known.

Public key or address are generated from one way hash function with SHA-256 encrypted algorithm which are meant to be public and there is no risk in exposing them unless your seed for the wallet is compromised with hackers.You can generate as many address like bech32,P2SH,P2KH address for different purposes so it doesn't matter.There are so many dormant bitcoin address lying there with thousands of Bitcoin in them but nothing can be done as only the owners possess the corresponding valid private keys and digital signature to spend the funds with them.Reverse transaction is not possible due to one way hash function of SHA-256 and Rimped-160 algorithm which provides security of funds in your wallets.Moreover the technology is not so developed at this time that you can make reverse decryption with quantum computing also at this time.So the answer is simple "NO".

[Lorence.xD]

It's just the addresses, they are on a public ledger anyways so I don't think that there's no inherent risk in that maybe if the identities behind the address then that's when I will have to worry but it's highly unlikely.

[ranochigo]

Public key or address are generated from one way hash function with SHA-256 encrypted algorithm which are meant to be public and there is no risk in exposing them unless your seed for the wallet is compromised with hackers.You can generate as many address like bech32,P2SH,P2KH address for different purposes so it doesn't matter.There are so many dormant bitcoin address lying there with thousands of Bitcoin in them but nothing can be done as only the owners possess the corresponding valid private keys and digital signature to spend the funds with them.Reverse transaction is not possible due to one way hash function of SHA-256 and Rimped-160 algorithm which provides security of funds in your wallets.Moreover the technology is not so developed at this time that you can make reverse decryption with quantum computing also at this time.So the answer is simple "NO".

SHA256 and RIPEMD-160 are not encryption algorithms, they are hash functions. You also cannot crack encryption or pre-image HASH160 with quantum computers.

Addresses are generated from the public keys with SHA256 and RIPEMD-160, public keys are based on ECDSA and does not involve SHA256 at all. Please do some fact checking before posting. Also, it isn't very relevant to the topic.

[aysg76]

SHA256 and RIPEMD-160 are not encryption algorithms, they are hash functions. You also cannot crack encryption or pre-image HASH160 with quantum computers.

Addresses are generated from the public keys with SHA256 and RIPEMD-160, public keys are based on ECDSA and does not involve SHA256 at all. Please do some fact checking before posting. Also, it isn't very relevant to the topic.

Thanks for correcting me mate as it was my bad to add encryption word with SHA-256 and Rimped-160 hash functions.

I was also stating that private keys cannot be cracked with quantum computing also as if it was possible then German programmer would also have it done to secure his funds worth nearly 7k Bitcoins.But again it was my mistake to mix some statements.

[xmonkeyx]

Of course not, unless the private key is widely disclosed then it is said to be risky. because there is no relationship and engineering between the address and the private key. even no one can interfere with the treasures in the wallet except the owner himself and the person who knows the private key of the wallet even though the wallet has not been used for a long time.