Entries tagged with this topic. Spans across types and sources — explore connections between people, events, and themes.
22 entries
Which Bitcoin assets are at risk from a cryptographically relevant quantum computer, and what the timeline and migration debate around post-quantum cryptography looks like.
Blockstream CEO Adam Back stated Bitcoin faces no quantum computing threat for ~20–40 years, pointing to NIST post-quantum signatures like SLH-DSA that Bitcoin can adopt before threats materialize.
Adam Back's reply to a question about whether Bitcoin faces near-term risk from quantum computing, pointing at NIST-standardized SLH-DSA and a 20–40 year horizon.
Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), a quantum-resistant output type. Like Taproot without the quantum-vulnerable key path spend — commits only to the Merkle root of a script tree. SegWit v2, soft fork.
American Bitcoin infrastructure engineer. Built Statoshi node telemetry (2014), co-founded Casa (2016), was SWATted at his home in 2017, and wrote "Who Controls Bitcoin Core?" (2018).
Security researcher Dan Kaminsky tries to find vulnerabilities in Bitcoin and fails. "I came up with beautiful bugs. But every time I went after the code there was a line that addressed the problem."
On LessWrong, Wei Dai clarifies he did not create Bitcoin — "only described a similar idea more than a decade ago" — buys a Radeon 5870 to mine, and warns Bitcoin lacks cryptographer security review.
Jeff Garzik posts the first public alert of the value-overflow incident, sharing the raw block data for #74638 with two outputs of 92,233,720,368.54277039 BTC each.
An integer overflow (CVE-2010-5139) let Block 74638 create 184 billion BTC. Satoshi released a fix 5h 40m after discovery; the fixed chain overtook the bad one about 15 hours after the block.
Structural reading of the 2010-08-15 overflow incident — soft-fork rescue mechanics, why a 5-hour response was only achievable then, transaction-shape forensics, and the centralization paradox.
Emergency release of Bitcoin v0.3.10 to fix a value overflow vulnerability exploited to create 184 billion bitcoins in a single transaction. Satoshi coordinated the rapid soft-fork deployment.
Pseudonymous early Bitcoin user who ran one of the largest 2010 nodes and hosted public blockchain snapshots. His snapshot seeded Gavin Andresen's recovery patch after the value overflow incident.
Satoshi corrects a SourceForge username mix-up, approves Malmi's FAQ draft, rewords the 'distribute under several keys' guidance, and reframes wallet-password as a security pitch against banks.
Satoshi explains that the chain must keep extending even without transactions, to prevent attackers from catching up.
Security consultant at Periwinkle who joined the cryptography list discussion of Bitcoin in January 2009, ironically observing that botnet-controlled machines are among the most secure on the network.
Bill Frantz ironically observes botnet-controlled machines are 'among the most secure' because operators keep rivals out, speculating operators could become legitimate PoW-funded security firms.
Trammell argues Bitcoin addresses are more secure than IP-based sending since they can be verified via multiple channels. He proposes an address-advertisement toggle and reports an exit socket bug.
Satoshi responds to Trammell's MITM analysis by classifying attacks into two types (chain-of-communication vs. anyone on the Internet), proposes a combined IP+address fix, and notes wallet encryption.
Trammell's detailed security analysis of Bitcoin's send-to-IP feature, identifying MITM vulnerabilities including ARP poisoning and ISP-level interception. Recommends always using Bitcoin addresses.
Trammell's detailed security analysis of Bitcoin's send-to-IP feature, identifying MITM vulnerabilities including ARP poisoning and ISP-level interception. Recommends always using Bitcoin addresses.
Information security researcher from Austin, Texas, among the first to run Bitcoin after release. Emailed Satoshi on January 11, 2009 and received 25 BTC — an early person-to-person transfer.
John Levine dismisses Bitcoin's security assumption — botnet operators control 100,000+ machine zombie farms, and hashcash failed for the same reason: bad guys outweigh good guys computationally.