I had a derp question and wasn't sure where to post it...

camosoul

camosoul

Well-known member
If an entity is observed using several addresses, and it is presumed by the observer that these addresses are of a deterministic seed, such as BIP32... Could the observer reverse-engineer the public seed and discover every address in the chain given sufficient addresses?
 
camosoul said:
If an entity is observed using several addresses, and it is presumed by the observer that these addresses are of a deterministic seed, such as BIP32... Could the observer reverse-engineer the public seed and discover every address in the chain given sufficient addresses?
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Of course he can.
 
UdjinM6 said:
Good luck reverting/brute-forcing HMAC-SHA512 to figure out chain-code :)
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He asked if reverse engineering is possible. He didnt asked when it will be possible, or how long it will take... :p
 
@camosoul you are lucky you have derp questions and they answer to you.

But if you have questions that they dont answer to you (derp questions or not) then post here your own editable single message and mention the persons who refuse to answer.

So that we will have statistics of those persons who constantly refuse to answer questions.
 
I very much doubt. However, I would suggest (with zero evidence), that it might be possible with a very unique set of circumstances, and one of those would be knowing which address is the very first address in the HD sequence. If at all possible, the costs would be so high, it would be far easier to hack your wallet and take screenshots etc. You could easily thwart such attempts by spending from two (or more) wallets with different seeds.

As an aside, for anyone thinking hardware wallets are the ultimate defence, keep in mind there are specially trained dogs to sniff out electronics. Make yourself an emergency plan and give it a realistic dry run.
 
UdjinM6 said:
Good luck reverting/brute-forcing HMAC-SHA512 to figure out chain-code :)
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki
https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitc...archical-deterministic-wallets-bip0032bip0044
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Thanks. I found the droids I was looking for:
A child private key, the corresponding public key, and the bitcoin address are all indistinguishable from keys and addresses created randomly. The fact that they are part of a sequence is not visible, outside of the HD wallet function that created them. Once created, they operate exactly as "normal" keys.
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I'm going to dig for more proof of this actually being so and why.
 
@demo - Some people label me a troll simply for being a harsh critic in some categories. This conflation suits snowflakes and I am pleased to earn their scorn.

Persons with a level head recognize that I am not a troll, even though I am kinda messed up... :-p
 
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