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That's true, it would actually make them seem less cretinous if they said they had cracked a lost key. I guess the fact that they have to have been so staggeri

by Blahah 13y ago

That's true, it would actually make them seem less cretinous if they said they had cracked a lost key. I guess the fact that they have to have been so staggeringly incompetent to have 200,000 bitcoins they didn't even know about makes me feel like there must be some other explanation than the one they are offering. Attempted theft is up there.

erichurkman 13y ago
Wouldn't someone publishing that keys can be cracked in realistic timeframes deal a blow to the currency itself? Sure, it would have required tons of computing power, but they still would have cracked the key in several weeks' time.
- garrettgrimsley 13y ago
  Well not exactly, as I understand it you could attack the passphrase protecting the key. If you remember any details about this passphrase then you can dramatically reduce the strength? (I'm not sure of the word to use here. Someone help me out) of said passphrase. But yes, if someone was able to crack keys in a reasonable amount of time then bitcoin would crash overnight.
  - erichurkman 13y ago
    Ah okay, you're right. And yes, if you knew anything about the key you could drastically reduce the key space to search.
  - dTal 13y ago
    Was the word you were looking for "entropy"?
    - garrettgrimsley 13y ago
      That would be it!
deftnerd 13y ago
Karpeles said last winter that they were going to make their keys more secure by breaking them into pieces using a Shamir's secret sharing algorithm. This would allow a key to be more secure because it would take several pieces, but not all of them, to reconstitute the private key. My assumption is that they either made a mistake with the algorithm, or they lost enough chunks of the keys that they can't reconstitute the private key. This could have been as simple as a banks safety-deposit box being inaccessible because it's seized or losing the pieces. If they were stored digitally, it could be as simple as a media problem (Organic dyes in CDR's degrade. USB drives aren't infallible, etc). The reason they got this wallet open is because they probably recovered the private key in some ancient backup they forgot they had from before they split the keys into pieces and deleted what they thought were the only copies of the unsecured keys. This is just my completely unsubstantiated theory, but it seems to match the current facts.
- olalonde 13y ago
  Mark stated that the missing coins were most likely lost due to transaction malleability. I don't know why he would risk lying for no good reason.
  - apalmer 13y ago
    The 'good' reason would be the 400 Million dollars... Not saying he is or isnt lying, but we cant just throw around the 'there is no good reason for him to say xyz' in this situation...
    - olalonde 13y ago
      Yes, that's what I meant: stealing them would have been a good reason to lie but covering up a form of negligence (media failure) with another form of negligence (transaction malleability), which was the theory I was trying to refute, doesn't seem especially useful (hence the "no good reason to lie").

by Blahah 13y ago

erichurkman 13y ago

Wouldn't someone publishing that keys can be cracked in realistic timeframes deal a blow to the currency itself? Sure, it would have required tons of computing power, but they still would have cracked the key in several weeks' time.

garrettgrimsley 13y ago
Well not exactly, as I understand it you could attack the passphrase protecting the key. If you remember any details about this passphrase then you can dramatically reduce the strength? (I'm not sure of the word to use here. Someone help me out) of said passphrase. But yes, if someone was able to crack keys in a reasonable amount of time then bitcoin would crash overnight.
- erichurkman 13y ago
  Ah okay, you're right. And yes, if you knew anything about the key you could drastically reduce the key space to search.
- dTal 13y ago
  Was the word you were looking for "entropy"?
  - garrettgrimsley 13y ago
    That would be it!

deftnerd 13y ago

Karpeles said last winter that they were going to make their keys more secure by breaking them into pieces using a Shamir's secret sharing algorithm. This would allow a key to be more secure because it would take several pieces, but not all of them, to reconstitute the private key. My assumption is that they either made a mistake with the algorithm, or they lost enough chunks of the keys that they can't reconstitute the private key. This could have been as simple as a banks safety-deposit box being inaccessible because it's seized or losing the pieces. If they were stored digitally, it could be as simple as a media problem (Organic dyes in CDR's degrade. USB drives aren't infallible, etc). The reason they got this wallet open is because they probably recovered the private key in some ancient backup they forgot they had from before they split the keys into pieces and deleted what they thought were the only copies of the unsecured keys. This is just my completely unsubstantiated theory, but it seems to match the current facts.

olalonde 13y ago
Mark stated that the missing coins were most likely lost due to transaction malleability. I don't know why he would risk lying for no good reason.
- apalmer 13y ago
  The 'good' reason would be the 400 Million dollars... Not saying he is or isnt lying, but we cant just throw around the 'there is no good reason for him to say xyz' in this situation...
  - olalonde 13y ago
    Yes, that's what I meant: stealing them would have been a good reason to lie but covering up a form of negligence (media failure) with another form of negligence (transaction malleability), which was the theory I was trying to refute, doesn't seem especially useful (hence the "no good reason to lie").