New Cracking Tool Exposes Major Flaw in Bitcoin Brainwallets
A white-hat hacker has released a new tool designed to illustrate the ease with which illicit actors can steal bitcoins from brainwallets, a type of bitcoin wallet iteration where passwords are not stored digitally - but in the memory of the user. Originally conceived as a way to keep sensitive wallet data offline and make bitcoin addresses easier to remember, the brainwallet was partly undone due to how it interacts with the bitcoin blockchain. A brainwallet uses a single, long password or phrase, converts it to a private key, a public key and finally an address. Using an offline attack,....
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With 2 bitcoins available to be won, Kryptokit contest tests new blockchain based marketing ideas. TORONTO, CANADA - SEPTEMBER 23, 2014 - Today Kryptokit, the makers of the instant bitcoin wallet RushWallet, launched a video with a twist: embedded in the humorous video is a series of clues that lead viewers to 30 hidden brainwallets filled with bitcoins. Once viewers decipher the clues they are invited to claim the wallets and transfer any bitcoins inside them into their own accounts. There are 2 bitcoins available to be won in a contest that will last 1 month or until all the wallets are....
In February, electric car maker Tesla announced it had purchased $1.5bn in Bitcoin. Along with the announcement was a commitment, they would also accept BTC as payment, making it the first car manufacturer to do so. The firm followed through with that pledge. As of yesterday, using Bitcoin to buy directly from Tesla became a […]
Here is a reality check for all the Bitcoin naysayers, the most widely used conventional electronic payment system – credit/debit cards are not really as secure as we had earlier thought. A serious protocol level flaw exposed by a couple of German security experts bares it all. It is not just the security flaw one has to be concerned about, but also the banks’ apathy towards fixing it! A recent report carried by well-known Russian media channel, Russia Today describes the serious security flaw in POS terminals. According to Karsten Nohl, one of the security experts from the Berlin based....
A “brainwallet” refers to a private key that is stored in the user’s memory in the form of a seed phrase or a passphrase.
Beware all ye who wonder down these paths where brainwallet.org and other brainwallets may lie. Many a person has stated warning from afar, such as tech wizard Jeff Garzik who shouted "No!" firm warning raised, and such as Robin Hood (of the Digital Age), where our tale lies today. The term 'brainwallet' has been in the Bitcoin space for a while; the first I heard about it was last summer (2013). Being a cautious person myself, and not a coder, I waited patiently whilst others experimented with this new thing, brainwallet.org. Brainwallets are Bitcoin wallets generated uniquely from a....