“Bunker mode” could be upon the blockchain sooner than one might think, according to a caution from Ethereum’s Justin Drake. The security researcher has put the industry on notice to implement urgent defensive measures, his worry being that AI is capable of breaking ECDSA signatures.
Justin Drake’s Call for Blockchain Vigilance
Drake made the case for the entire blockchain industry to prepare for such a scenario in an appearance on Bitcoin Magazine. He sees the possibility of sophisticated artificial intelligence targeting the ECDSA signatures that underpin most blockchains as a genuine risk and recommends moving assets to new addresses where public keys are hidden by hashes to reduce their vulnerability to an AI attack.
Antoine Poinsot’s Skepticism and the BIP54 Proposal
Antoine Poinsot of Bitcoin Core was not so easily convinced by Drake’s alarm. “There is no hard evidence for the kind of imminent peril he is talking about,” said Poinsot, who advised against instilling undue fear in blockchain users. Poinsot, co-author of BIP54 to address four vulnerabilities in the protocol, pointed out that while they are not an immediate concern, it is wise to fix them for the network’s long-term security.
Challenges of Upgrading Bitcoin’s Security
Then there is the matter of actually implementing protocol changes like BIP54. Poinsot observed that in the past, when the community and economy were smaller, soft forks were easier to coordinate; now, on the scale of global Bitcoin, consensus is much harder to achieve.
And if quantum computing does threaten Bitcoin’s security, trust in the currency will be eroded unless something is done about it. To guard against unforeseen cryptographic developments, Poinsot supports the gradual introduction of output types that can be used in an emergency.
Concerns Over Taproot and Competing Proposals
He has also taken issue with BIP360 and 361, seeing in them a danger to the Taproot incentive structure that is vital to Bitcoin. This is yet another example of the ongoing discussion in the community over how to insulate major cryptocurrencies from whatever technological threats may arise.
Every call by Bitcoin Magazine and how it played out — in the BuyCrypt bloggers tracker.
Source — Bitcoin Magazine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZXiNrlscJY
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