With yesterdays situation, where the FBI recovered BTC that was sent as a ransom to a group of ransomware attackers, people have been panicking since the FBI essentially said, through both a press conference and a detailed document (with a whole ton of info redacted from it):
We got their private key and took the BTC from their wallet
Of course, there was a ton of other stuff in between that part I just mentioned but most media outlets and the public were focused on one thing, how did the FBI get someones private key? And if they can get someone elses private key, how safe is mine? I'll try and answer these questions for you as well as debunk a few misconceptions along the way.
So let's start from the top. What is a private key? Private keys are long, randomly generated numbers that cannot easily be guessed. These keys are only shared with the person that owns the wallet in question which makes them highly secure. When dumbed down it's an extremely safe password that allows a user to access their cryptocurrency.
Private keys should be differentiated from public keys (public addresses), which is where we receive our crypto and can be shared publicly. Withdrawals can not be made from public addresses without your private key, simple as that. I could go into a lot more detail as to how it all works but you can easily find more info on the inner workings of the entire system elsewhere, for now, this is what you need to know.
Onto the problem at hand, can someone else hack your Private Key?
The answer is no, not a chance. If a person were to have your public address and than attempt to derive your private key, it would take them the amount of time that universe has left to exist, to ever get it. The only other way to get it, which would be to attempt to guess the entire phrase or brute force it, in which case, if it was possible, which it isn't, people would have access to each others nuclear codes and wouldn't be thinking about Bitcoin.
So the question on your mind, now, might be "then how did the FBI get that Private Key". The truth is we ourselves do not know, what we do know is that it wasn't a hacked address since that is impossible. There are many other ways that this could be done but none of them are easily doable ways or ones that directly make everyone's wallets at risk. These would be - Social engineering, hacking a laptop or getting a thumb drive... and similar methods, all of these methods rely on the human part of the wallet making some sort of mistake and revealing themselves and their data.
The narrative that has been thrown around that the FBI can find all of our keys is completely false and just a way for the US government to try and scare people into thinking their wallets might be exposed even tho they are not. Here is a plausible way that the FBI acquired the key.
The worst offenders of these baseless rumors of hacking are people saying "Quantum computers will kill crypto, they already are". And let me tell you why.
Firstly, quantum computers are far from being usable, they are still in the very early stages of development in labs and are nowhere near readily available.
Secondly, the tech is so unbelievably expensive to make and use that it would take way too much money to recover any good amount of any crypto to be worth it.
Thirdly, once quantum computers are available, it won't just be decryptions that become quantum, encryptions will do the same, as they always have and always will be in front of decryptions.
So, that is when I look at it, all that I had to say. Your crypto is still safe, just as it was before, nothing has changed and no major breakthroughs have happened so rest assured that, at least for the time being, your Private Key is safe, as long as you do not walk around telling and sending it to everyone.
Hope you enjoyed this article! Thanks for reading!
