Methods of Signing your BTC address to prove your identity

[tread93]

Hey guys,

I am curious as to the exact process on how to sign/ prove ownership of a BTC address with how I have seen many users do it here in this section: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=996318.0  I loved the concept that the user who started the thread above sought after, that is validation of ones account in the event is it compromised. What I am curio

Here is what Chat GPT said about this topic, but I would love to get all of your opinion on it as well and maybe we can even learn something from this informaiton

CHAT GPT SAYS THE FOLLOWING after my below prompting to it after I searched the proccess of signing one's bitcoin address since I have never actually done so nor knew the potential risks assumed once done:


"Would signing that message in any way compomise the security of the private key? What are the drawbacks to doing this for ones security both of their keys and of their location?
ChatGPT
Signing a message with a Bitcoin address does not directly compromise the security of the private key, as the key itself is never exposed or transmitted during the signing or verification process. The cryptographic algorithms used for signing (such as ECDSA in Bitcoin) are designed to ensure that the private key cannot be derived from the signature or the public key. However, there are considerations and potential drawbacks related to security and privacy to be aware of:

Security of the Private Key:

No Direct Exposure: As long as the wallet software is secure and operates correctly, signing a message does not expose the private key to risk. It's crucial to use reputable and audited wallet software to mitigate the risk of security flaws.
Replay Attacks: In theory, if you sign a poorly chosen message (e.g., one that has been signed by others), there might be a risk of replay attacks in specific, highly technical scenarios. However, this is generally not a concern with unique, personally crafted messages.
Privacy Concerns:

Association of Identity: By signing a message linked to a Bitcoin address, you publicly associate any identity or information revealed in that message (or in its context) with that address. This could affect privacy, especially if the address has been used for transactions that you prefer to keep private.
Linking Addresses Together: If you sign messages associated with multiple Bitcoin addresses, and those messages are publicly linked to your identity, it could allow others to link your addresses together. This could reduce privacy by revealing the extent of your holdings or transaction patterns.
Operational Security (OpSec):

Compromised Devices: If the device you use for signing is compromised (e.g., malware, keyloggers), your private key could be at risk, although this risk is present with any use of the private key, not just message signing.
Phishing Attacks: Be wary of any requests to sign messages, especially from unknown or untrusted sources. Phishing attacks could attempt to trick you into signing messages that could be used maliciously or to deceive others.
Location Privacy:

While signing a message itself doesn't reveal your location, the content of the message or the context in which you publish it could. Be cautious about including any location-identifying information if you wish to maintain location privacy.
In summary, while message signing is a powerful tool for proving ownership of a Bitcoin address without compromising the private key, it requires careful consideration of privacy and operational security. It's essential to be mindful of what information you're revealing through the messages you sign and to maintain good security practices for your devices and wallet software."

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[Orpichukwu]

In summary, while message signing is a powerful tool for proving ownership of a Bitcoin address without compromising the private key, it requires careful consideration of privacy and operational security. It's essential to be mindful of what information you're revealing through the messages you sign and to maintain good security practices for your devices and wallet software."

The person who is trying to sign in a message is the person who will determine the safety of his or her privacy, and sign-in messages are most often required for a particular reason, and to me, aside from the purpose of the sign-in message, all other content is irrelevant unless the date, which is supposed to let whoever is going to verify it, is recent and correct.
 
Any situation that will require someone to add privacy and person data to sign-in messages is not secured and can't even be requested in the forum here, as the forum is a good privacy advocate.

[PX-Z]

I am curious as to the exact process on how to sign/ prove ownership of a BTC address with how I have seen many users do it here in this section:

Think about it, every man who self-proclaimed that they are Satoshi Nakamoto can only be prove by signing a message with those address known to be owned by Satoshi, no ifs and no buts, if they can't then they are just want an attention. It's the same way how that thread works, but since there are already recovery team, it make so much easier to recover an account now than before.

Would signing that message in any way compomise the security of the private key? What are the drawbacks to doing this for ones security both of their keys and of their location?

Your question to chatgpt is out of this place, you only compromise your private keys if someone knows it other than you, so you need to save it to a secured and safe place. There's also no drawbacks in signing a message, location detection is something like providing a raw data of your latitude and longitude which is no way to be found on your keys.

[Catenaccio]

You can sign a message from one address and use another address for your storage and transactions.

A wallet for signing a message can be an empty wallet and you don't lose anything by signing a message.

People stake their Bitcoin address and message because they need other forum members to quote that message, and verify it. The most important is quoting it because if no member quote it, if a Bitcointalk account is compromised, hacker can delete that post.

You even don't need to sign a message initially, post a public address is enough. If you want to prove your ownership on it in future, you can sign a message with its private key.

[Upgrade00]

People stake their Bitcoin address and message because they need other forum members to quote that message, and verify it. The most important is quoting it because if no member quote it, if a Bitcointalk account is compromised, hacker can delete that post.

Quoting it helps to make it easier when it needs to be referenced, but with the forum scrapers we have now that log all posts made, the original posts with the address can always be pulled up if the need arises.
For older posts that were made before forum members started keeping logs, quoting is the only way to preserve them.

[examplens]

Hey guys,

I am curious as to the exact process on how to sign/ prove ownership of a BTC address with how I have seen many users do it here in this section: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=996318.0  I loved the concept that the user who started the thread above sought after, that is validation of ones account in the event is it compromised. What I am curio

The purpose of the address signing is only to prove that someone still manages it. Combined with the forum account that published that address in the past, it only proves that it is still the same owner.

I guess ChatGPT maybe doesn't understand this very well.

[SmartGold01]

People stake their Bitcoin address and message because they need other forum members to quote that message, and verify it. The most important is quoting it because if no member quote it, if a Bitcointalk account is compromised, hacker can delete that post.

I believe after 24hrs all post that you made is automatically being saved even though you go edit it you could still find it available in nijastic.space and you can't delete that that is why most of the addresses that is associated with some account are being filtered out without the knowledge of the real owner except such user also uses Nijastic.space before they could know their post is being archived.

[Catenaccio]

Quoting it helps to make it easier when it needs to be referenced, but with the forum scrapers we have now that log all posts made, the original posts with the address can always be pulled up if the need arises.
For older posts that were made before forum members started keeping logs, quoting is the only way to preserve them.

If a post with address is quoted in the forum, it is better than rely on any website, any scraper because they can stop working anytime.

When they are working, we can use them but if they are dead, only posts in the forum can be used as reference. Scrapers can help but not always and a post with an address is helpful if it is not deleted. A quote for that post can be deleted too but it must be very coincidence to see both the original post, the quoted post are deleted.

[Apocollapse]

The purpose of the address signing is only to prove that someone still manages it. Combined with the forum account that published that address in the past, it only proves that it is still the same owner.

There's still a chance the owner want to sell both of his address and his account.

Although someone can caught due to different posting style, but I don't think people will believe it. The only way is check the IP address, which only the administrators know about that.

When they are working, we can use them but if they are dead, only posts in the forum can be used as reference.

This forum can also went offline.

I believe after 24hrs all post that you made is automatically being saved even though you go edit it you could still find it available in nijastic.space

You don't have to wait for 24 hours, once you post it, it will automatically archived.

[348Judah]

All we care about is the means of proving ones identity for ownership of an account through signing of message using the bitcoin address you have, someone who doesn't have access to your wallet couldn't claim ownership for your account except they do so by signing a message, doing this also does not have to do with revealing your real identity to the public, you can only do so when you're exposing yourself using other means different from signing a message, for someone to proof your identity, they will have to get hold of your wallet keys, and have access to your forum login credentials.

[SamReomo]

It's always better to use multiple Bitcoin addresses for transaction and separate Bitcoin account or account for signing messages. No one can harm you even if you sign a messuage from your transaction wallet but that's something a privacy oriented person will never do.

Sometimes we unwilling tell people that how much money we have by signing messages from our transactional wallets and a few of those people can be scammers and thieves who will try to steal the Bitcoin someone has.

But for that they will have to physically reach the victim or convince him/her using social engineering tactics. Once the victim is convinced and somehow install an application or click on a vulnerable link then again those thieves and scammers can access the wallet.

That's why it's often suggested to avoid using the transitional wallet for signing of messages. As long as you own your seed phrase and it isn't given to anyone then they won't be able to know your transactional or message signing wallet.

[PytagoraZ]

People stake their Bitcoin address and message because they need other forum members to quote that message, and verify it. The most important is quoting it because if no member quote it, if a Bitcointalk account is compromised, hacker can delete that post.

I believe after 24hrs all post that you made is automatically being saved even though you go edit it you could still find it available in nijastic.space and you can't delete that that is why most of the addresses that is associated with some account are being filtered out without the knowledge of the real owner except such user also uses Nijastic.space before they could know their post is being archived.

Yes, you are right. Ninjastic will archive all original unedited posts. And this process is so fast that even if the post is deleted some time after you post it (Maybe their data recording is less than 5 seconds after posting), your original post will still be recorded. Apart from Ninjastic, there is still data owned by LoyceV

[SmartGold01]

People stake their Bitcoin address and message because they need other forum members to quote that message, and verify it. The most important is quoting it because if no member quote it, if a Bitcointalk account is compromised, hacker can delete that post.

I believe after 24hrs all post that you made is automatically being saved even though you go edit it you could still find it available in nijastic.space and you can't delete that that is why most of the addresses that is associated with some account are being filtered out without the knowledge of the real owner except such user also uses Nijastic.space before they could know their post is being archived.

Yes, you are right. Ninjastic will archive all original unedited posts. And this process is so fast that even if the post is deleted some time after you post it (Maybe their data recording is less than 5 seconds after posting), your original post will still be recorded.

So from what op is saying he must not wait for someone to quote him or her first before his data could be stored without being deleted, as soon as a post is being made then all data are being recorded at this point it could be hard for the account to get compromised or hacked even though the account is being hack though the previously wallet address that being attached the real owner could got his account restored from the hacker or someone who sold it to another person.

[LoyceV]

Here is what Chat GPT said about this topic

FYI: this is where I stopped reading, and clicked Ignore. How to lose all credibility 101.

[Shishir99]

Here is what Chat GPT said about this topic

FYI: this is where I stopped reading, and clicked Ignore. How to lose all credibility 101.

This is where I stopped too.

OP, this is one of the basic things. You don't need deep knowledge to understand how to sign a message using your Bitcoin wallet address. You don't have to ask ChatGPT or any other AI about it since they do not have knowledge about it and most of the time, these AI gives incorrect information. You can sign a message with your wallet address if you want. Electrum has the most friendly user interface from where you can sign/verify messages. I don't understand what you want to know about it. Just ask questions to humans. There no potential risks in signing a message with your wallet address.

[tread93]

Here is what Chat GPT said about this topic

FYI: this is where I stopped reading, and clicked Ignore. How to lose all credibility 101.

This is where I stopped too.

OP, this is one of the basic things. You don't need deep knowledge to understand how to sign a message using your Bitcoin wallet address. You don't have to ask ChatGPT or any other AI about it since they do not have knowledge about it and most of the time, these AI gives incorrect information. You can sign a message with your wallet address if you want. Electrum has the most friendly user interface from where you can sign/verify messages. I don't understand what you want to know about it. Just ask questions to humans. There no potential risks in signing a message with your wallet address.

Yeah I went back and re-read that and somehow some of what I said got deleted because I was on my phone and maybe fell asleep while editing or maybe a pocket edit when I was posting on my phone maybe? idk lmao. I went on to say at the part where it breaks and "curi" was never fully spelled out. Anyhow I went on to say that I had never signed a bitcoin transaction before and I had never known how this process works and I wanted to guage how Chat GPT answered this and get the opinion of the community. But anyhow I was just being lazy lol I really hadn't ever signed one before so I didn't know but I did a little research and I can see now there are verificaiton websites.

What I don't like is the handling of one's private keys. In this day and age there are so many potential devices that can capture a picture of anythng containing your PK I just don't trust it. Other than proving that you own a bitcoin address which is how someone could prove they are satoshi for example, right? I don't really see the benefit here and i'd be willing to wager that some folks lost all their holdings in a wallet where they messed up this process somewhere???. I feel ike a lot can happen in the time you are handling your private keys. Anything inputing your private keys into anywhere you have to 1000% certain that you are secure and fully offline. Definitely loved learning this, a huge oversight on my part but all the more reason to love this technology more and the detailed thought that Satoshi put into every little part of it.

What I am curio

[Danydee]

The problem is in reality simple to understand ..

To give an image, actually the signature is just like a (Hash) of the message using the <pivate-key/address> factor, so signing message do not expose anything.. and if you trust your wallet software for managing your bitcoins you are very obviously able to trust it to sign a message!

[Timelord2067]

Signing a message as "proof" of ownership of a UID is meaningless as it has been common knowledge for many years that scammers sell accounts which come with a signed message, or one where a wallet address has already been posted.

[tread93]

Signing a message as "proof" of ownership of a UID is meaningless as it has been common knowledge for many years that scammers sell accounts which come with a signed message, or one where a wallet address has already been posted.

Wow that is an interesting turn in the discussion. This means that hackers can then probably sell those compromised accounts perhaps at a premium? I wouldn't know this as I don't surf though any dark web postings or use TOR or anything, although I would surely be interested to learn all about it simply for educational purposes. I wonder now if there is any other way than just this to prove you are the owner of a given address? I mean technically someone could post on social media that they own a certain address and that they were going to make a transaction at a certain time at a specified amount and linked to the outgoing wallet or something....

[BlackBoss_]

Signing a message as "proof" of ownership of a UID is meaningless as it has been common knowledge for many years that scammers sell accounts which come with a signed message, or one where a wallet address has already been posted.

Sellers only can provide a signed message if they are original owners and can sign a message with old address of those accounts.

If sellers are secondary owners, they can not have private keys of old addresses of those accounts that were hacked and sold to those secondary owners before they continue to re-sell it.

I wonder now if there is any other way than just this to prove you are the owner of a given address?

Hacking an account might not come together with getting access to private keys of that person. It is very rare to get access to both an account and a wallet of the victim.