Quote from: holy_ship on November 27, 2018, 03:06:57 AM

Quote from: almightyruler on November 27, 2018, 02:41:47 AM

Cracking arbitrary addresses - funds that belong to other people - is completely different. IMHO.

If you find a large wallet in low addresspace (or address with collision to low addresspace) then actually you've done a security audit.
Whether you are thief or not is decided by your FOLLOWING actions, but not the fact that you bruteforced something.

Yes, I agree with that. You can still find something without actually taking possession of it. Since I started SHA256 brainwallet research I've been bitten by the password cracking bug, for no reason other than the rush of seeing my system spit out a new password. Cheesy

To muddy the waters a little, some people may suggest that moving funds from an insecure address may actually benefit the owner of those funds. For a while there was a bot actively ~~stealing~~ sweeping SHA256 brainwallet funds, but the owner of that bot apparently returned the swept funds if asked nicely. I'm not sure what he did (or intended to do) with the funds that people never claimed...