Mining v Hacking

[thirdprize]

Just curious, if you had unlimited processing power, would it be easier to use it for mining or (after having found a nice public key) trying to work out the private key?  Presumably you could spam transactions with an infinite number of private keys and one of them would eventually work.  Is there any safeguards against this?

[1715131857]

1715131857

[1715131857]

1715131857

[1715131857]

1715131857

[1715131857]

1715131857

[1715131857]

1715131857

[shorena]

Just curious, if you had unlimited processing power, would it be easier to use it for mining or (after having found a nice public key) trying to work out the private key?  Presumably you could spam transactions with an infinite number of private keys and one of them would eventually work.  Is there any safeguards against this?

Against unlimited procecssing power? Nope, nothing, but the boundaries of this universe.

[bitcoin_purist]

Just curious, if you had unlimited processing power, would it be easier to use it for mining or (after having found a nice public key) trying to work out the private key?  Presumably you could spam transactions with an infinite number of private keys and one of them would eventually work.  Is there any safeguards against this?

If you had unlimited processing power, you could hack the entire internet, bitcoin would not be number one target imho.

[Jamie_Boulder]

Just curious, if you had unlimited processing power, would it be easier to use it for mining or (after having found a nice public key) trying to work out the private key?  Presumably you could spam transactions with an infinite number of private keys and one of them would eventually work.  Is there any safeguards against this?

Against unlimited procecssing power? Nope, nothing, but the boundaries of this universe.

Assuming these is a limit which there always is, time is your only enemy.

[548845]

Just curious, if you had unlimited processing power, would it be easier to use it for mining or (after having found a nice public key) trying to work out the private key?  Presumably you could spam transactions with an infinite number of private keys and one of them would eventually work.  Is there any safeguards against this?

Against unlimited procecssing power? Nope, nothing, but the boundaries of this universe.

Numbers.
Once you have realized that there will always be MORE mathematical equations (solutions) for you to perform, then you will realize that numbers is the ONLY thing that is truly infinite.


 

[turvarya]

Where is the user, with this nice little picture about what amount of energy you would need for that ?

[TookDk]

Where is the user, with this nice little picture about what amount of energy you would need for that ?

Someone summoned me

http://miguelmoreno.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/fYFBsqp.jpg

[turvarya]

Where is the user, with this nice little picture about what amount of energy you would need for that ?

"Someone summoned me"

Are you thinking of this one?

http://miguelmoreno.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/fYFBsqp.jpg

Yay
I love this picture, I should bookmark it ^^

[Soros Shorts]

Just curious, if you had unlimited processing power, would it be easier to use it for mining or (after having found a nice public key) trying to work out the private key?  Presumably you could spam transactions with an infinite number of private keys and one of them would eventually work.  Is there any safeguards against this?

If you had unlimited processing power, you could hack the entire internet, bitcoin would not be number one target imho.

Hopefully someday Bitcoin would be the number one target, but right now if I had that kind of power I would clean out people's online accounts at JPMC, Citi and BofA.

[TookDk]

Where is the user, with this nice little picture about what amount of energy you would need for that ?

"Someone summoned me"

Are you thinking of this one?

http://miguelmoreno.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/fYFBsqp.jpg

Yay
I love this picture, I should bookmark it ^^

Yes, it really but things in perspective.
Also help illustrate how big of a number 2^256 is, most people have an idea that it is big, but not how big it really is.

As a side note: the number space of bitcoin private keys are "only" 2^160, since capital "O", the capital "I" and the lowercase "l", as well as the number "0" is excluded.

But 2^160 is till a very very very very very large number.

[redsn0w]

Where is the user, with this nice little picture about what amount of energy you would need for that ?

"Someone summoned me"

Are you thinking of this one?

http://miguelmoreno.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/fYFBsqp.jpg

Yay
I love this picture, I should bookmark it ^^

Yes, it really but things in perspective.
Also help illustrate how big of a number 2^256 is, most people have an idea that it is big, but not how big it really is.

As a side note: the number space of bitcoin private keys are "only" 2^160, since capital "O", the capital "I" and the lowercase "l", as well as the number "0" is excluded.

But 2^160 is till a very very very very very large number.

It's almost impossible , you can't live "for ever". This is a great image that explain you better :



Thanks to @TookDk.

[TookDk]

Thanks to @TookDk.

You are welcome

Please note I am not the author of the picture, I just like to post it, when people start talking about bitcoin address collisions and brute forcing private keys.

[hhanh00]

Today mining is easier since it is possible whereas a brute force hack is not.
But mining adjusts its difficulty. It has 256 bits to work with and hacking has 160 bits.
In theory, mining can become harder than hacking. Though
In practice both are unfeasible by brute force.

However brute force is the dumbest way to hack. Bullies don't make good hackers.

[shorena]

-snip-

Yes, it really but things in perspective.
Also help illustrate how big of a number 2^256 is, most people have an idea that it is big, but not how big it really is.

As a side note: the number space of bitcoin private keys are "only" 2^160, since capital "O", the capital "I" and the lowercase "l", as well as the number "0" is excluded.

But 2^160 is till a very very very very very large number.

Base58 ("O","I","l" and "0" excluded) is not the reason behind this. A private key is actually a 256bit number as well as the public key, but besides SHA256 also RIPEMD-160 is used and offers "only" 160 Bit. Thus there are 2⁹⁶ valid private keys for each address. The Base58 encoding you are refering to is just the final step [1].


[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses

[Q7]

Well it depends. If a person is a cunning type and would not bother living happily despite knowing the victim who has lost the stash of bitcoin is living in misery, then probably he will choose to hack. That is provided that by calculation the account holds substantial stash of btc measured and weighed against mining reward.

For me, I would never do that even with all the processing power at my disposal. Question is.... not everybody will think the same.
.

[Flashman]

Damn, most of these threads sound like.

"I have a bicycle, that means I can get to Sirius right?"

[sandy47bt]

Lol, if you have unlimited processing power
I will trying work out satoshi nakamoto wallet 

But, you can get something better than bitcoin itself 
You might can predict future with huge source & unlimited processing power

Where is the user, with this nice little picture about what amount of energy you would need for that ?

Someone summoned me

http://miguelmoreno.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/fYFBsqp.jpg

Nice explanation 

[thirdprize]

Yeah, but do the NSA have any back doors into it?   

[Flashman]

Yeah, but do the NSA have any back doors into it?   

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/7781/satoshis-genius-unexpected-ways-in-which-bitcoin-dodged-some-cryptographic-bullet/
https://chrispacia.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/nsa-backdoors-and-bitcoin/

[thirdprize]

If Btc is to be the future then it needs to be future proof.  How fast will Quantum computers be in 20 years time?  What if we had two suns could we multi thread it? 

[NarC]

interesting.

[BombaUcigasa]

If Btc is to be the future then it needs to be future proof.  How fast will Quantum computers be in 20 years time?  What if we had two suns could we multi thread it? 

You add a single IF conditional line in the bitcoin core, specifying a block number. After this line, you specify that the hash verification function is one that uses 50-100% more bit entropy, increasing the security by all atoms times all atoms in the Universe to unimaginable efforts.

And then we use bitcoin just like before, except miners will have to use this new algorithm, it doesn't matter what computers we use, we can always pick something that can resist for 5-10 years ahead.

[Haruko]

Where is the user, with this nice little picture about what amount of energy you would need for that ?

"Someone summoned me"

Are you thinking of this one?

http://miguelmoreno.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/fYFBsqp.jpg

Yay
I love this picture, I should bookmark it ^^

Yes, it really but things in perspective.
Also help illustrate how big of a number 2^256 is, most people have an idea that it is big, but not how big it really is.

As a side note: the number space of bitcoin private keys are "only" 2^160, since capital "O", the capital "I" and the lowercase "l", as well as the number "0" is excluded.

But 2^160 is till a very very very very very large number.

It's almost impossible , you can't live "for ever". This is a great image that explain you better :



Thanks to @TookDk.

Hi!!!

nice to read this!!!

this is my first post and i'm really curious to know from you where do you get this article?

[TookDk]

Hi!!!

nice to read this!!!

this is my first post and i'm really curious to know from you where do you get this article?

I found it by a simple google image search with the following search parameters
bruteforce bitcoin energy

The picture is rather "old" and well known, I do not know the author.

[JLynn171]

agreed, infinite amount of computing power btc would not be your main obective... if you had that you could just mine them and i guess steal them if you wanted and get them all and they would then be worthless so you wasted all this imaginary computer power to turn gold into mud :-P

[JLynn171]

Where is the user, with this nice little picture about what amount of energy you would need for that ?

"Someone summoned me"

Are you thinking of this one?

http://miguelmoreno.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/fYFBsqp.jpg

Yay
I love this picture, I should bookmark it ^^

Yes, it really but things in perspective.
Also help illustrate how big of a number 2^256 is, most people have an idea that it is big, but not how big it really is.

As a side note: the number space of bitcoin private keys are "only" 2^160, since capital "O", the capital "I" and the lowercase "l", as well as the number "0" is excluded.

But 2^160 is till a very very very very very large number.

It's almost impossible , you can't live "for ever". This is a great image that explain you better :



Thanks to @TookDk.

Hi!!!

nice to read this!!!

this is my first post and i'm really curious to know from you where do you get this article?

I've heard it explained to me before that the number of possible bitcoin addresses is equal to "if all of the grains of sand on earth were annoter earth then all the gfrains of sands on all those earths... that is alot to sift through

[TookDk]

agreed, infinite amount of computing power btc would not be your main obective... if you had that you could just mine them and i guess steal them if you wanted and get them all and they would then be worthless so you wasted all this imaginary computer power to turn gold into mud :-P

That is the beauty of bitcoin, if you have enough "power" to corrupt the system, then would you also destroy the system, making your scam-profit worthless. Satoshi mention this in the white paper when he explains the security of PoW.

[JLynn171]

agreed, infinite amount of computing power btc would not be your main obective... if you had that you could just mine them and i guess steal them if you wanted and get them all and they would then be worthless so you wasted all this imaginary computer power to turn gold into mud :-P

That is the beauty of bitcoin, if you have enough "power" to corrupt the system, then would you also destroy the system, making your scam-profit worthless. Satoshi mention this in the white paper when he explains the security of PoW.

but there are people out there who just "want to watch the world burn"

[TookDk]

but there are people out there who just "want to watch the world burn"

Indeed, but remember that the majority of the bitcoin users want to protect the system.
In case someone get enough hashpower to destroy the system, then can "we" (the honest users), just fork the block chain e.g. with a new algo (as already mentioned), the honest user will follow the new chain, and the terrorist can stay on his corrupted chain, alone with all his worthless coins.

[Haruko]

agreed, infinite amount of computing power btc would not be your main obective... if you had that you could just mine them and i guess steal them if you wanted and get them all and they would then be worthless so you wasted all this imaginary computer power to turn gold into mud :-P

That is the beauty of bitcoin, if you have enough "power" to corrupt the system, then would you also destroy the system, making your scam-profit worthless. Satoshi mention this in the white paper when he explains the security of PoW.

but there are people out there who just "want to watch the world burn"

sorry.. i correct you

but there are people out there who just "would like to watch the world burn"
just would, because it is impossible...at least in the BITCOIN world

 

[LightningBlade]

Definitely mining is way better, hacking with processing power is waste of resources.

[david wilson]

A Bitcoin mining pool, called GHash and operated by an anonymous entity called CEX.io, just reached 51% of total network mining power today. Bitcoin is no longer decentralized. GHash can control Bitcoin transactions.

[BitmoreCoin]

It takes many trillions of years to hack one wallet.

[Flashman]

It takes many trillions of years to hack one wallet.

n00b/troll: But what if I had a room full of really fast celerons???

It takes many trillions of years to hack one wallet.

n00b/troll: But what if I had 2 rooms full of really fast celerons???

It takes many trillions of years to hack one wallet.

n00b/troll: But what if I had a warehouse full of really fast celerons???

It takes many trillions of years to hack one wallet.

n00b/troll: And overclocked them???

It takes many trillions of years to hack one wallet.

n00b/troll: But I don't get it, bitcoin uses big numbers, computers can do big numbers, I can't even be bothered counting to a thousand and that's big.  So if I get like a THOUSAND really fast computers, like an Alienware or some shit, I am sure I'd pwn all the bitcoins.

It takes many trillions of years to hack one wallet.

[548845]

It takes many trillions of years suns to hack one wallet.

It could happen in a split second so long as you had THAT much processing power.

Yeah, well....
I am sorry but I doubt that is going to happen soon, but it wont take trillions of years
A little bird told me that matter will not matter in the future......
Something about some types of gasses or whatever ......

[TookDk]

A Bitcoin mining pool, called GHash and operated by an anonymous entity called CEX.io, just reached 51% of total network mining power today. Bitcoin is no longer decentralized. GHash can control Bitcoin transactions.

A user, called david wilson operated by an anonymous newbie account, just reached my ignore list for spreading FUD today.

1. There is actually a relative ok distribution right now, "only" 14% for GHash :
https://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=1days
2. GHash had more than 50% in the past, this is not an historical event anymore.
3. 50% is not a magic number that say if the system is centralized or not, in order to corrupt the system you need to maintain more than 50% for a longer period of time, since 50% of the hashrate is not equal to 100% chance of finding a block.

[Argwai96]

agreed, infinite amount of computing power btc would not be your main obective... if you had that you could just mine them and i guess steal them if you wanted and get them all and they would then be worthless so you wasted all this imaginary computer power to turn gold into mud :-P

That is the beauty of bitcoin, if you have enough "power" to corrupt the system, then would you also destroy the system, making your scam-profit worthless. Satoshi mention this in the white paper when he explains the security of PoW.

The point here is that the "power" is something that you buy via buying equipment and when you attack the Bitcoin network you will be devaluing the value of your equipment that cannot do anything other then mine a SHA256 coin.

[TookDk]

agreed, infinite amount of computing power btc would not be your main obective... if you had that you could just mine them and i guess steal them if you wanted and get them all and they would then be worthless so you wasted all this imaginary computer power to turn gold into mud :-P

That is the beauty of bitcoin, if you have enough "power" to corrupt the system, then would you also destroy the system, making your scam-profit worthless. Satoshi mention this in the white paper when he explains the security of PoW.

The point here is that the "power" is something that you buy via buying equipment and when you attack the Bitcoin network you will be devaluing the value of your equipment that cannot do anything other then mine a SHA256 coin.

Exactly!

[JLynn171]

agreed, infinite amount of computing power btc would not be your main obective... if you had that you could just mine them and i guess steal them if you wanted and get them all and they would then be worthless so you wasted all this imaginary computer power to turn gold into mud :-P

That is the beauty of bitcoin, if you have enough "power" to corrupt the system, then would you also destroy the system, making your scam-profit worthless. Satoshi mention this in the white paper when he explains the security of PoW.

The point here is that the "power" is something that you buy via buying equipment and when you attack the Bitcoin network you will be devaluing the value of your equipment that cannot do anything other then mine a SHA256 coin.

Exactly!

lol :-) gotta lovethe checks and balances built in to the btc world :-)

[Elwar]

You're better off using that unlimited amount of processing power toward your favorite video game and its graphics.