Let's say the Large Bitcoin Collider manages to guess the private key of a particular Nano Ledger S. Can they then 'spend' or 'steal' the Bitcoins on the Nano or 'send' them to another wallet?
Can the Large Bitcoin Collider project 'break' into offline hardware wallets like the Nano Ledger S?
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No, because it can't break any private key at all (if generated correctly).– Pieter WuilleCommented May 2, 2018 at 21:01
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What do you mean it can't break any private key at all ? I've read they have already 'guessed' several private keys.– DCHCommented May 2, 2018 at 21:59
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3Only ones created by broken software. It is computationally infeasible to break an actual randomly generated key.– Pieter WuilleCommented May 2, 2018 at 22:03
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Wow .... didn't know that. So why are people at LBC trying ??? Are there that many private keys that are created by broken software ?– DCHCommented May 3, 2018 at 12:10
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I believe they're just having fun spreading nonsense.– Pieter WuilleCommented May 3, 2018 at 17:53
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1 Answer
If LBC is somehow able to guess anyone's private key, regardless of how the private key is normally stored and generated, then yes, they can just spend the coins. All you need is the private key, it does not matter how the key was obtained.
Of course this is impossible to do in practice with today's technology. The range of possible private keys is incredibly large, much larger than a human can imagine. If the private keys were generated with sufficient randomness (which Ledger Nano S's do as they have a True Random Number Generator), then the probability of generating a private key that is in use is so small that it is effectively zero.
