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Vitalik Buterin backs crypto ‘bunker mode’ amid rapid AI math advances

https://cointelegraph.com/news/justin-drake-urges-crypto-bunker-mode-as-ai-could-break-wallet-security-within-months (cointelegraph.com)

32 points | 1h ago | Discuss on Hacker News | Back to Radar

Comments

spottedmarley 42m ago on HN
It may be a plausible concern at some point in the future but, once it's possible, it would manifest as an extremely expensive and time consuming attack against a targeted address, it would require an enormous amount of compute. So, I suppose the first line of defense would be to never keep more funds locked under one key than it would cost an attacker to decrypt it.
warkdarrior 27m ago on HN
Cost of running an attack is super cheap if one buys botted computers (it is/used to be $25/1000 machines).
_ink_ 27m ago on HN
Which leaves Bitcoin between a rock and a hard place. The Satoshi funds are probably worth an attack. At the same time they cannot move to post quantum cryptography, because that would also require to move funds.
spottedmarley 17m ago on HN
Yeah the Satoshi treasure would be a prime target. Maybe we see those funds get mysteriously split up at some point? But we wouldn't know if they were hacked or protected..
tzone 25m ago on HN
There are exchanges, custodians, etc that hold insane amounts of BTC or ETH in a single address.

We are talking billion dollars+ worth in a single address. So if either chainskey security is compromised in a way that it is conceivable to brute force it, there will definitely be plenty of targets.

spottedmarley 19m ago on HN
Yes, it would require those exchanges to move their funds around. I'm pretty sure they can manage it.
search_facility 33m ago on HN
May be Ethereum should fund 10000 agents to pursue new crypto math with provable strongness/hardness
Lerc 3m ago on HN
I think much of the the doomer propaganda is paid for by by the half billion or so that Vitalik Butering gave to the Future of Life institute. It sounds like he wanted it spent on research more than advocacy and is now distancing himself from them.
what 25m ago on HN
Why should we believe that LLMs are going to break ECC?
plesiv 9m ago on HN
Your probability distribution should be flatter at least.
EA-3167 20m ago on HN
It’s always tragic when the new hype train runs over the old one. It pains my soul to imagine those gentle folks with millions in crypto being subjected to the incredibly foreseeable consequences of their limitless greed.
notnullorvoid 17m ago on HN
My gut is telling me pushing security model to hashes seems like a far far worse bet if you are worried about advances in maths.
palmotea 9m ago on HN
> My gut is telling me pushing security model to hashes seems like a far far worse bet if you are worried about advances in maths.

Aren't hashes far less reliant on math tricks?

My understanding is the problem with public-key crypto is it extremely reliant on a single math trick (e.g. the factoring problem), so if it turns out that trick was weaker than was assumed, the whole thing crumbles.

MattPalmer1086 9m ago on HN
The point is they have less algebraic structure than things like elliptic curves. If you want "math resistant" properties, this is a good thing.
simonw 10m ago on HN
Crypto's greatest weakness has always been security. Even if the algorithms themselves hold, humans need to keep their keys safe. We have decades of experience now showing that humans can't do that.

I wouldn't be worrying about the algorithms so much as I'd worry about all of the end-users who are going to get their keys stolen and their wallets drained thanks to the deluge of new vulnerabilities in operating systems, browsers, wallets, personal agents and other software.

j2kun 6m ago on HN
FWIW, there has already been a lot of effort thrown at AI attacking lattice problems underlying PQC without anything to show for it. I'm not sure why Vitalik is suddenly worried about lattice problems in particular, unless he has some insider knowledge.

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