4 ms·
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?
by 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 agoNo. 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 agoThere 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 agoAn 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.