4 ms·

Nailed it. I’m waiting for the inevitable wave of social media posts, etc from all of the people who will lose access to their wallets, have them hacked someho

Nailed it. I’m waiting for the inevitable wave of social media posts, etc from all of the people who will lose access to their wallets, have them hacked somehow, etc. I’m sure centralized exchanges are already being flooded with customer support issues from people who don’t fully grasp what self-custody is and the risk it entails. Most people aren’t qualified or capable to build a fortress with medieval-castle or Fort Knox levels of security and process for their crypto wallets but that’s more equivalent than not of what’s required to properly secure them and maintain access over time. The general population hasn’t experienced “you’re completely on your own” for nearly anything in at least a couple of generations - and for good reason because it’s absurd.

thedaly 4y ago
I gave my brother a Trezor and with approximately $1.5k USD worth of bitcoin on it as repayment for money he lent me. I'm fairly certain he hasn't touched it and has lost the pin/seed. I think I have his seed written down somewhere, I certainly gave him a written copy when I gave him the trezor, but if I can't find it his BTC will be lost.
- halkony 4y ago
  I'm not super into crypto, but could you theoretically brute force a hardware wallet if you had enough computing power in the year 20XX?
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    No. Most of these systems use enough "bits" in the key or whatever that brute forcing it would basically require hiring the entirety of AWS for a hundred years and also winning the lottery in terms of luck. Raw number crunching power of silicon would need to double like 5 to 10 times before it's even a thought in the NSAs mind, and I am in the camp of that never happening. There will never be enough computing power for cheap enough to crack a wallet holding $1500 in bitcoin, unless quantum computing literally magics up a solution, which might never happen, even in theory.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    There are 2 things you can brute-force: 1) the seed for the private key - this is infeasible to brute-force just like you can't brute-force a private key directly 2) the authentication credential to the hardware wallet - the key space is small enough that brute forcing it would normally be easy, except the whole purpose of a hardware wallet is to limit the amount of attempts. The former option is infeasible, the latter has a slim chance if some vulnerability in the hardware wallet was discovered in the future.
  - netfortius 4y ago
    An interesting evolution in this space would be when hackers will find a way to "inject" malicious code in the images being installed on the hardware wallets, at the source. Getting access to production networks and/or private github/other version control internal systems, associated with these devices, may prove to be easier than attempting to brute-force keys.

thedaly 4y ago

I gave my brother a Trezor and with approximately $1.5k USD worth of bitcoin on it as repayment for money he lent me. I'm fairly certain he hasn't touched it and has lost the pin/seed. I think I have his seed written down somewhere, I certainly gave him a written copy when I gave him the trezor, but if I can't find it his BTC will be lost.

halkony 4y ago
I'm not super into crypto, but could you theoretically brute force a hardware wallet if you had enough computing power in the year 20XX?
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  No. Most of these systems use enough "bits" in the key or whatever that brute forcing it would basically require hiring the entirety of AWS for a hundred years and also winning the lottery in terms of luck. Raw number crunching power of silicon would need to double like 5 to 10 times before it's even a thought in the NSAs mind, and I am in the camp of that never happening. There will never be enough computing power for cheap enough to crack a wallet holding $1500 in bitcoin, unless quantum computing literally magics up a solution, which might never happen, even in theory.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  There are 2 things you can brute-force: 1) the seed for the private key - this is infeasible to brute-force just like you can't brute-force a private key directly 2) the authentication credential to the hardware wallet - the key space is small enough that brute forcing it would normally be easy, except the whole purpose of a hardware wallet is to limit the amount of attempts. The former option is infeasible, the latter has a slim chance if some vulnerability in the hardware wallet was discovered in the future.
- netfortius 4y ago
  An interesting evolution in this space would be when hackers will find a way to "inject" malicious code in the images being installed on the hardware wallets, at the source. Getting access to production networks and/or private github/other version control internal systems, associated with these devices, may prove to be easier than attempting to brute-force keys.