Ninjastic
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Re: Is it possible to hack BTC on that address only by knowing the bitcoin address?
by
Newmine
on 19/02/2017, 02:55:03 UTC
Quote from: DannyHamilton on February 19, 2017, 12:01:37 AM
Quote from: RawDog on February 18, 2017, 07:16:32 PM
Quote from: BitLover001 on February 18, 2017, 06:53:15 PM
Quote from: RawDog on February 18, 2017, 05:53:33 PM
Quote from: Star.Wars on February 18, 2017, 05:22:16 PM
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How can a hacker attack this address? There is no other information. There's only address information and bitcoin amount.
This is actually very easy. 

1) buy a pretty good quality computer.
- snip -
Vanitygen guesses millions of times per second.  With enough seconds, it is not impossible. 
Lol I love your word soon...
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So yeah if several thousand of years is soon for you, sure start it now Wink
I said you have to buy a 'good quality computer'.
- snip -

Yes.  You said "good quality computer."

You also said "millions of times per second."

It is reasonable to assume that millions of times per second means less than 1,000,000,000 per second.

If you can guess 1,000,000,000 per second:

  • It will take you less than 1 second        to try 229 keys.
  • It will take you less than 1 minute         to try 235 keys.
  • It will take you less than 1 hour            to try 241 keys.
  • It will take you less than 1 day              to try 246 keys.
  • It will take you less than 1 week            to try 249 keys.
  • It will take you less than 1 month          to try 252 keys.
  • It will take you less than 1 year             to try 254 keys.
  • It will take you less than 1 decade          to try 258 keys.
  • It will take you less than 1 century         to try 261 keys.
  • It will take you less than 1 millennium    to try 264 keys.
  • It will take you less than 10 billion years to try 288 keys.
  • It will take you MORE THAN 13.2 BILLION YEARS to try 289 keys.

The universe is estimated to only be 13.2 billion years old right now.

So if you started at the big bang, and continuously generated 1 billion addresses per second, right now you still wouldn't have generated even one billionth of one percent of all the possible addresses.  Odds are nearly certain that you still wouldn't have found the private key for the address you started with.



Don't forget about luck. It would be 13.2 billion years if in the very last second of that 13.2 billion years and you happened across the correct private key. In reality, you would come across it sometime sooner, right?

Side thought, what is stopping people from importing random bitcoin private keys at a mass rate. With the growing number of users and addresses used, at some point they would get lucky with that too, right?