A 'Blockchain Bandit' Is Guessing Private Keys and Scoring Millions

Re:A 'Blockchain Bandit' Is Guessing Private Keys and Scorin... by lordnacho on Wednesday April 24, 2019 @10:57AM (#19738957)

I discovered this personally when writing some bitcoin code.

I got to a stage where I wanted to test my code all the way to the BTC blockchain. I figured I'd stick in the randomizing seed later, and just make sure I could talk to the blockchain. To my surprise, every time I made a transaction I'd see another one on the explorer sites, emptying my new address. I did it a couple of times thinking I'd coded something wrong or something like that.

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Re:A 'Blockchain Bandit' Is Guessing Private Keys and Scorin... by kirbypineapple on Wednesday April 24, 2019 @10:59AM (#19738989)

How did you generate your seed? Not trying to insult you, but the number of people generating seeds online or using very poor seeds is mind boggling.

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Re:A 'Blockchain Bandit' Is Guessing Private Keys and Scorin... by lordnacho on Wednesday April 24, 2019 @11:49AM (#19739598)

Just a crappy simple word. I thought I'd just make sure the whole process worked first, then replace the string with something more sensible.

You'd think they'd put a minimum in there before grabbing the coins.

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