Official Statement from the CryptoNote Team Regarding Exploit and Monero Attack
It was brought to my attention thanks to our own Kendrick Bitz that last week a community member going by the name of “Bitcoin EXpress” was threatening to exploit CryptoNote and attack Monero.
BitcoinEXpress, a hero member of the BitcoinTalk Forum, carried on in a thread about how he is going to exploit CryptoNote and Monero, claiming that a user’s private key gets exposed when passing through a ring signature. If this were to be the case, this could have a chilling effect on all CryptoNote coins – not just Monero.
This incident has created a lot of concern within the community, seeming to be a topic of discussion for many and quite possibly influenced a price decline with Monero and other CryptoNote coins over the past week.
So, we spoke with Catherine Erwin, CryptoNote’s Communications Manager, about the potential exploit to bring clarity to the community. This is what she had to share exclusively with BitcoinBarbie.com:
“We would like to refute the statement on the potential private key vulnerability. The security of CryptoNote’s technology is based on the infallibility of mathematical functions such as discrete logarithm problem or the Diffie-Hellman problem. The CryptoNote whitepaper and protocol is based on the well-known cryptographic primitives. There are no new cryptographic assumptions which could result in the private keys being exposed to a 3rd party. Moreover, there is nothing new in the one-time ring signatures concept. It corresponds to a well-known scheme called traceable ring sig which is referred to in the list of references of the whitepaper.
“CryptoNote is always watching out for incidents such as the one you have brought to our attention. The CryptoNote technology allows the creation of cryptocurrencies and for the last few years we’ve been working to make CN the most reliable and secure platform.
“However, on this particular occasion we haven’t found any indication of an exploit. We cannot exclude the possibility that certain individuals have been deliberately spreading rumors in order to mislead users that are not well versed in CryptoNote’s technology.”
This is not the only time BitcoinEXpress has threatened the community. Just over a week ago, EXpress said that he would take Poloniex, a popular crypto-currency exchange, down with a ddos attack – and he successfully did shortly after making the claim. As a result, everyone participating in the discussion and aware of this problem became increasingly worried when he went on to further threaten to perform a 51% attack on Monero last Saturday.
Fortunately for all CryptoNote users, this time it looks like BitcoinEXpress was bluffing. Monero was not attacked and all CryptoNote coins safely live on to prosper for those that would like to use them, without exposing any ring signatures.
“CryptoNote is complex and certain individuals may try to capitalize on the fact that not everyone is well informed about its mechanics,” Catherine further explained. “Should there be any questions about CryptoNote, please, feel free to contact us through email or CN forum
http://forum.cryptonote.org.”
Remember: Don’t listen to the hype!
