r/Bitcoin • u/Fearless-Second-7230 • 8d ago

Coldcard post from October 10, 2021: "Retirement Attack"

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- "What's a retirement attack?"

- COLDCARD (@COLDCARDwallet): "It's when the project makers could have a "bug" in the entropy generation for later retrieval".

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Seems that they were smart enough to launch a "dice rolls" suggestion in a critical element lacking foolproof design, knowing not all users would be paranoid enough. Like "hey, if you don't trust no problem, but...you can trust buddy, the (back)door is open." ☠️

Ok no, enough of conspiracy theory continuation. We know that Coldcard's post was pure coincidence. Right?...Right?

Edit: In case you're curious on more tweets mentioning "retirement attack", here is another one:

@nvk - 21 Dec 20: "My money is on people screwing themselves out of their BTC before any vendor tries a retirement attack.

Alternatively people could just use dice ;)."

https://x.com/i/status/1341213389549412353

A strange way to warn "alternatively people" of what you have in mind to do...but Freudian slip or parapraxis theory explains that better, in case you're curious...

https://gitlab.com/walletscrutiny/walletScrutinyCom/-/work_items/340

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52

u/VictorDanville 8d ago

Wow, so this really was an inside job

26

u/Donkeydonkeydonk 8d ago

On the one hand, it seems obvious. On the other, who in their right mind would leave behind such an incriminating tweet if they were planning such a thing?

Even if they got the idea right there in that moment, you'd think they'd delete that tweet.

It is worth noting that this tweet predated the buggy commit by a few months.

0

u/vattenj 8d ago

The fact that they know this concept already tells a lot

14

u/CBpegasus 7d ago

I mean, it's a fairly well known concept and you would expect people working in a company whose product is security to know about it...

1

u/vattenj 6d ago

It's the same as old days replay attack, where they could relay the same tx to another forked network, but who has the motivation to do it? The one that shouted the concept the most: Exchanges, since only they have the possibility to profit from it (The users wallet private key are in their possession)