Episode notes
In this episode, Aaron (@AaronvanW) and Sjors (@provoost) discuss a vulnerability in Libbitcoin dubbed “Milk Sad”, which allowed people to generate private key seeds with such weak entropy that their private keys could be brute forced and their coins stolen. Aaron and Sjors examine how this vulnerability (could have) ended up in Libbitcoin as well as in Andreas Antonopoulos’ book Mastering Bitcoin, to what extent it should be considered a bug, and more.
For more information on Milk Sad, see: https://milksad.info/
Libbitcoin lead developer Eric Voskuil on Milk Sad: https://youtu.be/3uwl5xDdc7c
Addendum 2023-08-18: The Mersenne Twister pseudo-random number generated was not intended to be cryptographically secure. So my claim that it was thought to be secure was incorrect. It’s simply the wrong tool for the job (of creating a private key with real money at stake).
Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425
Chapters
00:00:00 Listener boosts and Lightning payment splits
00:01:50 Milk Sad and the Libbitcoin toolkit
00:06:18 The unsafe bx seed command
00:09:11 32-bit seeds, stolen coins and Trust Wallet
00:14:21 Mastering Bitcoin and the changing library
00:20:56 Why use an insecure random number generator?
00:25:46 Vague warnings and the risks of making your own keys
00:33:53 Was Milk Sad intentional? Examining the evidence
00:40:24 Preventing misuse and risks to other wallets
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