Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Technical Support
Merits 2 from 1 user
Re: Trick to find PrivatKey Bitcoin Core descriptor wallet, is this method safe?
by
nc50lc
on 27/01/2024, 06:21:57 UTC
⭐ Merited by ABCbits (2)
A link to the discussion on our local board, can be found HERE. Is the method above safe to do?
It looks similar to my instructions here: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5449245.msg62109703#msg62109703

The method is safe as long as it's done in an Air-Gap machine.
However, the exported private key must be kept safe at all cost because it could compromise all of the other child key
of its parent extended private key (xprv) if the extended public key from the wallet is compromised with it.

Unlike the legacy wallet.dat with pure hardened derivation path, the new descriptor wallet derives the receiving/change derivation paths and its child keys without "hardened" derivation.
It means that a child private key and its public parent can be used to compute its private parent key.

So, only do that if exporting the private key is really necessary.