BTC wallets security

[btcb3g1nn3r]

Hi,
I've seen on Telegram during last weeks around 3 old (like 10y old with no activity) wallets selling their btc.
What are the chances that these wallets are actually broken by bruteforce? I know there were discussions some years ago about people that were trying to crack the private keys.
What do you think guys? Can such successful act would mean the end of btc era?

regards

[_act_]

What do you think guys? Can such successful act would mean the end of btc era?

Some people can hold their coins for years. Some people will inherit the coin from their parents. Because you see a coin that has been dormant for years transferred, that does not mean the wallet was hacked or brute forced. Bitcoin is still a secured asset if tou are not careless with your private key or seed phrase.

[OmegaStarScream]

Definitely not something you need to worry about. There have been countless discussions about this on both Reddit (here's an example[1]) and here on the forums.

Now even assuming it's possible, why would someone try and bruteforce anything 10 years ago when bitcoin was worthless? I'm guessing that's the argument you're making? Since it's been 10 years, and now wallets are moving funds, you think someone was trying to crack the wallets during all of this period?

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/16phvqe/brute_force/

[RickDeckard]

Hi,
I've seen on Telegram during last weeks around 3 old (like 10y old with no activity) wallets selling their btc.
What are the chances that these wallets are actually broken by bruteforce? I know there were discussions some years ago about people that were trying to crack the private keys.
What do you think guys? Can such successful act would mean the end of btc era?

regards

My take on this matter is rather simple - instead of trying to brute-force something that you will probably never be able to break in the hopes of getting bitcoin, I would recommend you to instead direct your time into buying bitcoin (either DCA or lump sum). From my perspective a shift in that effort will be more rewarding than what you are currently envisioning doing.

[Apocollapse]

Is there any difference between old wallet and new wallet? if Bitcoin wallet is easily get hacked, I'm sure that few or more users in this forum will open a thread and tell if their wallet gets hacked.

And... there's a chance if this coins are owned by Mt.Gox and they're start to refund to the customers.

If you think that Bitcoin wallet can be brute forced, then you need to read this post below.

and my point with this topic is that people who say 2^256 and discounting the amount of wallets that are out there with a balance so you're not targeting one wallet but +40mill and growing amount of wallets. maybe oneday it will be billions of wallets.

It still doesn't matter. You are failing to comprehend the sheer size of the numbers we are talking about here.

2¹⁶⁰ is the collision space for finding a private key which matches to a specific address. This is the equivalent of trying to pick one single specific atom out of all the atoms in the entire world.

Now let's consider your "billions of wallets" situation. Let's use water as an example, and instead of "billions", let's ramp it up to 8 billion billion - enough for every person in the world to have a billion addresses. 8 billion billion molecules of water, divided by Avogadro's constant, multiplied the molar mass of water, gives 0.0002 milliliters of water. That's about 0.5% of the volume of a single drop of water. Let's spread all the molecules in that 1/200th of a single drop of water around and inside the entire planet. How likely is it going to be to find one?

You can ramp this example up by many more orders of magnitude before you approach something that is even remotely within the realms of possibilities.

[Ruttoshi]

It might be that the owner of the wallet forgot his password of his wallet or misplaced it and now have access to his password. If bitcoin is transferred from a wallet after tens years does not mean that the wallet has being compromised.

It is impossible to brute force anyone seed phrase, you can read this thread by Fillippone to understand better.

There are 2^256 private keys out there: how big is that number?

[ibuddy122505]

Hi,
I've seen on Telegram during last weeks around 3 old (like 10y old with no activity) wallets selling their btc.
What are the chances that these wallets are actually broken by bruteforce? I know there were discussions some years ago about people that were trying to crack the private keys.
What do you think guys? Can such successful act would mean the end of btc era?

regards

This topic has been discussed many times before, so it's no longer a major concern for most. However, it is still important and concerning part for newcomers who just enter to the market. There are always hacking attempts if our devices lack security. While concerns do arise, solutions are available, but nothing can end BTC's dominance.

[dzungmobile]

What are the chances that these wallets are actually broken by bruteforce? I know there were discussions some years ago about people that were trying to crack the private keys.
What do you think guys? Can such successful act would mean the end of btc era?

If you can find proof that it is successful private key brute force, you can say it's the end of Bitcoin blockchain because even you use a non custodial wallet, has private keys in your wallet, you don't control your bitcoin. Someone else can find your private keys and use them to move your bitcoin.

So far, no proof to say about it so let's assume Bitcoin private keys are safe if you use a non custodial wallet and has good practice when create your wallet, offline or best on air gap devices.

Years ago, there is a discussion about it with a graphic, finding an atom in the universe is similar to find a Bitcoin private key.

[Pmalek]

I wouldn't worry about it, not yet at least. One day the time might come when you can generate a private key from a known public key, but I think that's far in the future. Can wallet passwords and seed phrases be bruteforced? Sure, but that's not a new thing. Weak passwords or passwords with enough known characters are bruteforceable. Seed phrases with only a few missing words as well.

It seems that every couple of months we hear news how an old whale wallet suddenly became active and moved coins to an exchange. Crypto media makes more fuss about it than there needs to be. That just proves that you can never know the status of a wallet and its keys and consider it lost just because there was no activity in it in X years. It can be an old holder who suddenly needed money and decided to sell their coins. 

[EL MOHA]

It seems that every couple of months we hear news how an old whale wallet suddenly became active and moved coins to an exchange. Crypto media makes more fuss about it than there needs to be. That just proves that you can never know the status of a wallet and its keys and consider it lost just because there was no activity in it in X years. It can be an old holder who suddenly needed money and decided to sell their coins. 

Exactly people especially crypto news channels make fuss about this kind of news in my opinion just to create FUD. If a wallet is left untouched for a very long term it is most probably good to think that a long term holder is the owner. The old bitcoin wallet usually were gotten with just little amounts, the owners might have set a time target like till today’s date before they will take profit, so does moving this coins means the wallet has been brute force not all.

Another reason for movement again could be that the old seed phrase or private key might have been generated by a wallet that doesn’t seems recommended, say a closed source wallet and the older decides to change the wallet and therefore needs to move it into another one. It could also be move of coins from a damaged hardware to a new one or from an hot wallet to a cold wallet for better security. So not all coins moved out means there up for sale like the news outlets puts it out to be

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

That just proves that you can never know the status of a wallet and its keys and consider it lost just because there was no activity in it in X years. It can be an old holder who suddenly needed money and decided to sell their coins. 

There are people who lost their bitcoin forever because they lost their wallets, private keys years ago. They are in HODL waves but we simply can not identify them. Estimations we make with X inactive years, like you said, are only estimations and not accurate numbers. Some of inactive wallets will wake up some day and move bitcoins.

https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/hodl-waves/

Estimations on possible lost bitcoin are never accurate because of unidentifiable inactive wallets too.

[Dunamisx]

What do you think guys? Can such successful act would mean the end of btc era?

Why should any act related to this be suspected for an era to the end of bitcoin, this is nothing than an empty threat the way i see it, just as from how you could also be scammed or hold your asset for long and make no transfer till when you feel like doing so, when you now do so, it is improper for everyone of us to keep giving different interpretation to what caused your own way of action which you did, apply this same to the case in consideration over what you have just spoken.

[BitMaxz]

I think he is talking about fake wallet.dat files if so then brute-forcing these fake wallets are waste of time and like you said it's broken and you shouldn't waste your time and money unless you want to try it I'm sure you are wasting your time trying to brute-force a wallet that can't easily be decrypted it might take decades and you will die first before you can break one wallet.

I don't think about what you mean by the end of the BTC era if BTC has been hackable since the first launch why are people still using it? Brute-forcing a wallet is possible but it doesn't mean that you can brute-force all wallets and extract all private keys it depends on the wallet and how strong its passphrase is.
Unless you talking about online wallets they are always vulnerable to any attacks like blockchain wallet this is not a good wallet since it is always online and prawn to any attacks online.

[Findingnemo]

Hi,
I've seen on Telegram during last weeks around 3 old (like 10y old with no activity) wallets selling their btc.
What are the chances that these wallets are actually broken by bruteforce? I know there were discussions some years ago about people that were trying to crack the private keys.

There are lot of misconceptions here

1. Moving funds from a wallet doesn't necessarily mean they are cashing out.
2. People can do it as a safety measure to save them under new address(es).

Theoretically brute-forcing private keys is possible but the real question is how long does it takes, and with the most powerful system it will take more than a million years which means it's safe to say the funds moved by the owner or who got access to the private keys not that by means of bruteforcing.

[PX-Z]

Hi,
I've seen on Telegram during last weeks around 3 old (like 10y old with no activity) wallets selling their btc.
What are the chances that these wallets are actually broken by bruteforce? I know there were discussions some years ago about people that were trying to crack the private keys.
What do you think guys? Can such successful act would mean the end of btc era?

Forget it, it's scam. 10 yr old wallet are probably from bitcoin core wallet.dat file which lots of scammers trying their best selling this files without anyone getting it because its either its fake and there's no way to bruteforce it.

[pooya87]

What are the chances that these wallets are actually broken by bruteforce?

0%

It is impossible not because of brute-forcing a password is impossible but it is impossible because those wallets are fake. Otherwise depending on the password (eg. if you know the length and some part of your own password) there can be some hope of recovering funds.

From what I've seen in the year I've been active in the bitcoin community, all those wallets that are being sold on the internet are a manipulated wallet file to appear as if they hold the keys to those funded addresses. The scammers create these files to make money from selling them and they sell them to a lot of newbies.

[DubemIfedigbo001]

Well, everything is possible, but I rather love being optimistic with my thoughts. I want to believe that the owner of the wallet was holding for ten years and decided to sell recently.

Instead of disturbing yourself with the possibility of brute forcing to compromise someone else's wallet, why not direct your focus to accumulation of bitcoin now, maybe in coming years when you start reaping the fruits of your labour, someone else might think you the same of you.

When people start reaping the fruits of their labour, most times it looks like magic or something unusual and I think that's the case with this issue.

[Pmalek]

Why should any act related to this be suspected for an era to the end of bitcoin...

OP was trying to ask that if someone is able to bruteforce a random wallet (its password or private keys/seeds), would that be an end to bitcoin. It would absolutely be an end to the bitcoin as we know if if random seeds and private keys were to be guessed by quantum computers. In that case, Bitcoin would have to switch to a quantum-resistant algorithm. 

[tranthidung]

Why should any act related to this be suspected for an era to the end of bitcoin...

OP was trying to ask that if someone is able to bruteforce a random wallet (its password or private keys/seeds), would that be an end to bitcoin.

Bruteforce a wallet password and bruteforce a wallet seeds / private keys are different activities.

Bruteforce a wallet password is possible if the wallet is weak and people get their passwords compromised many times. There are many reports on risk and compromise on weak passwords and how to set up, use a strong password.

Are your passwords in the green?
[Guide] How to use a strong password?

Use weak password for wallets and get hacked, it's not responsible of Bitcoin and Bitcoin wallet software developers, it's user responsibility to understand risk of weak password and change themselves, to use strong ones.

[Pmalek]

Bruteforce a wallet password and bruteforce a wallet seeds / private keys are different activities.

I know that. I am only imagining possible "what if" scenarios. But OK, let's put wallet passwords or passwords in general aside. In those scenarios, if random private keys corresponding to bitcoin addresses started to get emptied on a massive scale without users doing anything wrong, we would have reached a point where the underlying security has become questionable, especially if we learn about breakthroughs in quantum computing, where the machines are now capable of doing such calculations that are currently impossible. Such a situation would end the Bitcoin we know today.