Bitcoin Cryptography Broken in 2017

The digital signature scheme of bitcoin with SHA256+secp256k1 ECDSA will be broken before 31 December 2017 by security researchers. The attack should allow to forge digital signatures for at least a proportion of 1/1 million bitcoin users and steal money from them. It should be done faster than 2^100 point additions total including the time to examine the data.

The decision will be based on the best attack reported in academic cryptography literature. The result should be disclosed or publicly demonstrated before 31 Dec. 2017. It should confirmed by a majority of at least 3 other independent researchers with a PhD in cryptography. Attacks in which the message was not signed correctly e.g. repeated identical randoms are NOT valid attacks.

• bitcoin,
• cryptography,
• cybersecurity,
• secp256k1,
• ECC crypto,
• ECDLP,
• SHA256

RESOLVED AT 4:28AM, Jan 2, 2018 UTC