Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Split private keys
by
ben-abuya
on 25/06/2011, 10:48:02 UTC
I don't think this is correct.
  • You have the following 4 items: the private key (A), the public key (B), its associated hash (C) and finally the associated bitcoin address (D), which is base58encode( hash (C) + checksum). (D) is only invented so that the hash (C) is human friendly.
  • If you know (C), you can calculate (D) and vice-versa. But is it not possible to calculate the public key (B) from (C) or (D).
  • Initially to receive coins, you reveal your bitcoin address (D).
  • If you send coins to it, a standard transaction is made to (C) (Humans do not really need to read the raw blockchain). Output from it can be claimed if you can sign the transaction.

Yeah, those are very good points. The compromised computer can already know that the bitcoin addresses you're sending from belong to the same account and that they belong to you (if the computer has any additional information about you). This could be an issue, and should probably be addressed by any scheme that purports to be secure. The only added amount of data it could glean from you requesting previous transactions for bitcoin addresses is that it could infer that you own bitcoin addresses that you may not end up using in the send transactions.