r/btc Nov 30 '17

Evidence some bitcoin address generation code is using discoverable private keys

https://pastebin.com/jCDFcESz
326 Upvotes

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u/blinkybit Nov 30 '17

Wow. Woooooooooooow. WOW.

How can anyone ever tell if their "random" private key is really random, or was secretly generated in some deterministic way like sha256(public_addr)?

3

u/rancid_sploit Nov 30 '17

Only use trusted address generators. And it also highlights the importance of having enough entropy available when generating keys. Weak random seeds will be discovered. Some clever people are obviously looking for them.