So many times we have learned about cryptography and security the hard way. One of the key problems is ignoring the advice and warnings, which are plainly written in the current crypto literature. This without the slightest ambiguity, so that there is very little doubt about what a reasonable and professional security practice is. The Story …
Continue reading ‘Controversy Around Bitcoin Elliptic Curve’ »
Bitcoin is widely believed to be an open source egalitarian system that was designed and fully specified by Satoshi and which is decentralized and governed by some sort of majority rule. The reality is very different. It isn’t any of these. Bitcoin is a murky shadowy system which obeys peculiar rules which nobody fully understands and …
Continue reading ‘The Day On Which Bitcoin Has Become Centralized’ »
Bitcoin has a toxic culture of NOT taking security and cryptography questions seriously ever. Being able to withstand expert criticism, champion best practices and anticipate the risks is crucial for any open source project. Unhappily we observe that: There isn’t a single academic or scientist at the bitcoin foundation and they don’t like being criticized on …
Continue reading ‘Bitcoin Security and Cryptography: Reasons to Worry’ »
It appears that Satoshi have convinced himself that bitcoin was secure or secure enough. In his paper he repeatedly claims that bitcoin is secure IF a certain assumption holds. What is the exact assumption of Satoshi? Knowing the assumption is crucial because if we have stated our assumption and bitcoin is later shown to be broken or …
Continue reading ‘What is the Security Assumption in Satoshi Paper on Bitcoin?’ »
In Section 6 of the celebrated original Satoshi paper on bitcoin we read that: “If a greedy attacker is able to assemble more CPU power than all the honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it to defraud people by stealing back his payments, or using it to generate new coins”. And later we …
What do we stand for? The answer is quite simple: threats and attacks needs to be anticipated and protections must be built pro-actively, in advance before something bad happens and it is maybe too late. The golden standard in information security is: “it’s always better to assume the worst” because “when the unexpected happens, you’ll be glad …
Post in the series “bitcoin mistaken claim of the month”. Bitcoin Wiki and 51% I have today looked at the official Bitcoin wiki which is there to “document [bitcoin] problems openly” and provide an open forum with “loads of discussion about bitcoin’s problems” according to an official and highly respected source. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses I have checked and …
Continue reading ‘Best Understood Attack In All of Bitcoin?’ »