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Yes, he is talking about real dice. He comes from Bitcoin security point of view: don't trust anything. Dice, being physical objects outside of computer networ
by imaginenore 11y ago
Yes, he is talking about real dice. He comes from Bitcoin security point of view: don't trust anything.
Dice, being physical objects outside of computer networks can be trusted to a pretty good degree.
When it comes to creating something random on a computer, it's actually incredibly hard to guarantee randomness. Most RNGs are black boxes or are so non-transparent that they might as well be black boxes.
You might have an idea how your *nix /dev/random works, but can you actually guarantee your OS is not compromised? Can your guarantee your BIOS is not compromised? Can you guarantee that your hardware is not compromised?
That's why if you want a truly secure Bitcoin cold storage, you generate a wallet offline using something like dice or coinflips (dice are quicker).
- Dylan16807 11y agoI don't quite follow your logic. You still need an airgapped computer to turn those random bits into a working address, don't you? Is there a way to do that by hand? Is it more likely that the RNG is compromised than the bitcoin software?
- imaginenore 11y agoYes, but you have eliminated one vector of attack - a faulty or compromised RNG. > Is it more likely that the RNG is compromised than the bitcoin software? 1) That's a weird question. It's not like they are mutually exclusive. Both are possible. Dice allows you to eliminate the RNG problems. 2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generator_attack#Prominent_examples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generator_attack#...
- Dylan16807 11y agoIf I think the risk is high enough to worry about, I'm going to use a method that gets close to eliminating it. I'm not going to settle for only removing one vector.
- imaginenore 11y agoSo don't. Using an airgapped computer will not save you against against a compromised RNG (e.g. reduced entropy). Your computer-generated numbers might look random to you, but you can't really be sure.
- Dylan16807 11y ago>So don't. Isn't that my argument? Maybe I should try again to clarify my position. 'Just' an airgapped computer solves neither backdoored RNG nor backdoored bitcoin software. A trusted airgapped computer comes close to solving both. Using dice only gives me half a solution; why bother?
- imaginenore 11y agoAirgapped computer definitely solves the compromised software/firmware problem, because it can't send your private keys to the attacker.
- Dylan16807 11y agoCompromised software can do anything a compromised RNG can do and more. Especially with something finicky like asymmetric crypto.