Quote from: HeRetiK on January 01, 2018, 08:22:18 PM

I think what Spendulus is referring to is that brainwallets that are derived from human generated passphrases tend to get bruteforced sooner or later. At least those that are purely based on words that can be found in dictionaries and quotes that stem from books and song lyrics.

There are many examples of brainwallets that got swiped by attackers, however it is of course impossible tell what percentage of brainwallets is affected since the total number of brainwallets is unknown. Nonetheless the general recommendation on these forums and other social platforms has been to stay clear of brainwallets (whether justified or not).

yeah.. I've read that "general recommendation" and none of the people who stand behind them is actually able to give me an answer on how exactly would they approach a brute forcing of a complex passphrase - one that is not just a word or a phrase from a dictionary.

they don't give the answer because they don't have any - that's the kind of 'experts' they are.
for me, they are just full of shit - what they do has zero to do with science and 100% to do with their beliefs driven by a subjective perception.

seriously, I am not aware of any hacking tool, or even a serious theoretical paper, that would successfully address a problem of brute forcing original sentences made by a human brain. make an original sentence (one that you can't just google) of ~20 words and I am betting all my bitcoins that no man armed with the fastest computer is going to brute force it before we both die.

if I wanted to crack brain wallets, I'd rather put my effort in finding a way to calculate the EC-private key from the EC-public, rather than try to brute force a creativity (or insanity) of a human brain. the first one not only seems less complex and more straight forward to me, but (most of all) it would then crack all the wallets