Pay attention To This Episode:
On this episode of “Bitcoin, Defined,” hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost focus on reusing Bitcoin addresses. Extra particularly, they clarify why reusing Bitcoin addresses is a nasty concept.
Reusing Bitcoin addresses is a nasty concept for roughly three causes. The primary two of those are that it harms privateness and impedes on Bitcoin’s censorship resistance . Within the episode, van Wirdum and Provoost go over a pair examples of how such a lack of privateness and censorship resistance can negatively have an effect on bitcoin customers.
The third motive that reusing Bitcoin addresses is a nasty concept is as a result of it opens up the potential for some area of interest assaults. In sure circumstances, attackers may extract non-public keys from signatures after cash are first spent from an handle — although this does require {that a} pockets applied the signing algorithm incorrectly within the first place. There are additionally some potential future eventualities the place quantum computer systems may extract non-public keys from signatures if addresses are reused.
One other sort of area of interest assault is a timing side-channel assault, such because the not too long ago disclosed “Hertzbleed Assault.” Provoost explains that attackers can doubtlessly derive a personal key from a pockets by intently monitoring how the pc that hosts the pockets behaves when signing a transaction. This assault is extra believable if addresses are reused.
These aforementioned examples are among the the reason why bitcoin customers ought to chorus from utilizing addresses greater than as soon as. Tackle reuse hurts customers’ privateness and might doubtlessly result in a Hertzbleed Assault.