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Exploring Bitcoin’s oldest addresses, quantum computing, public-key cryptography, and the unanswered questions surrounding Satoshi Nakamoto’s untouched fortune.
More than 1.1 million Bitcoin have remained untouched since 2009.
They belong — at least according to overwhelming on-chain evidence — to Bitcoin’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
For over fifteen years, these coins have never moved.
Yet as quantum computing advances, an uncomfortable question is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore:
Could the largest dormant Bitcoin fortune in history eventually become vulnerable?
The answer is far more complicated than most headlines suggest.
To understand this hypothesis, we must first look at the pessimistic scenario accepted by the majority of crypto experts.
This is why traditional consensus dictates that if a sufficiently powerful quantum machine ever emerges, Satoshi’s coins will be the first and most probable target for attack. They are massive, ancient, and feature exposed keys.
But what if we are underestimating the architect of the system?
This is where things get genuinely fascinating. In cryptography, entropy is the measure of true randomness.
Imagine a simple example: what if we take an ordinary microphone and generate entropic data based on an acoustic source, say, the sound of raindrops hitting a wooden window frame during a storm? Think about it — how many such unique, unpredictable sources of entropy could be created? More than just one.
While the hypothesis of high entropy adds a layer of optimism, Bitcoin developers are not leaving things to chance. The cryptographic community is proactively engineering defensive mechanisms.
Long before truly dangerous quantum computers materialize, the Bitcoin community will almost certainly implement a soft fork to transition to post-quantum cryptographic algorithms (such as lattice-based signatures or other quantum-resistant schemes). This will allow users to safely “migrate” their funds from legacy addresses to modern ones without fearing mathematical decryption.
However, what happens to old, dormant addresses (including Satoshi’s coins), where no one is present to execute a manual migration? That remains an open protocol question that the community will have to resolve via consensus in the future.
Let’s step away from the opinions of famous social media voices and public figures for a moment, and ask ourselves one simple question:
Could a person who built such a high-tech blockchain, created the most high-performing project structure in history, and possessed some of the deepest knowledge in cryptography, have simply ignored or failed to account for the eventual emergence of supercomputers and AI applications? Of course not.
It is genuinely disheartening to see certain prominent figures making completely absurd public proposals like: “Let’s protect Satoshi’s Bitcoin assets by simply burning them, freezing them, or rewriting them via a fork.” They forget the core law of Bitcoin that must never be broken: no single coin can ever be changed, rewritten, or destroyed — neither through a fork nor through any other coercive mechanism. The right to private property here is absolute.
Those who propose such solutions are simply underestimating Satoshi. This person took care of their assets and the security of the system far better than critics can possibly imagine.
My hope is that these public figures finally begin genuinely researching the internal mechanisms of how Bitcoin works, understand what it was built for, and stop spreading panic, moving instead to discussing truly serious matters. The palace of the digital economy is built to last centuries.
https://www.youtube.com/@orlaresearcher
More detail: https://medium.com/@orlaresearcher/4d6c68fed6ee?source=friends_link&sk=f8292678c4a6a0185b58b9d72f62380e
Satoshi’s Lost Million: Are Bitcoin’s Oldest Coins Really Vulnerable to Quantum Computing? was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Bitcoin Magazine
The Quantum Issue: Letter From The Editor
Quantum this, quantum that…who put a stupid cat on-chain!?
Ahem.
Alright, let’s be serious. The threat that a viable, actually functioning, quantum computer would pose to Bitcoin if it were to be built is very serious. It is the concrete example of an existential threat, in every sense of the word.
One of the bedrock foundations that Bitcoin rests upon is the assumption of a functioning cryptographic system that can be used to produce unforgeable signatures, i.e. that if you follow that system’s protocol properly when signing things, there is no way that anyone but a bitcoin’s rightful owner could produce a signature needed to spend it unless the rightful owner failed to secure their private key from theft.
Quantum computers toss that right out the window. There goes the integrity of the entire mechanism that is used for owners of bitcoin to authenticate their ownership for the protocol to process their legitimately authorized transactions, and ONLY their legitimately authorized transactions. There’s no way for anyone to actually own anything in the context of the Bitcoin protocol if that assumption breaks.
Bitcoin breaks if that assumption breaks.
Thankfully, there are many different cryptographic systems that exist, and not all of them rest on assumptions that a quantum computer breaks. That’s the good news. The bad news is that its all a set of tradeoffs, none of them are ideal, and there are going to be some hard choices that have to be made.
But there are solutions to just about every one of the problems that a viable quantum computer would create…except the problem of choosing which solutions to use. So in light of that, here is The Quantum Issue.
This issue is a lot more structured than most past issues, and that is to ensure that it guides a reader through the entirety of the problem space and solution space without assuming any prior understanding (this is a very deep and technical subject).
The first set of articles goes through the general issue of quantum computing itself, how it differs from classical computing, why that matters, how likely it is one is developed soon, etc.
The second set examines Bitcoin’s exposure. How is it exposed? How badly is it exposed? How can that degree of exposure change?
The third set examines concrete (or developed enough to not be too hard to get to a concrete place) solutions to securing your bitcoin in a quantum safe way, and handling a network wide migration to those solutions.
Don’t miss your chance to own The Quantum Issue — featuring articles written by many influential figures in the space working on the necessary pieces for a post-quantum Bitcoin!
This piece is the Letter from the Editor featured in the latest Print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The Quantum Issue. We’re sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue.
This post The Quantum Issue: Letter From The Editor first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Shinobi.
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The Quantum computing industry is making leaps and bounds towards developing quantum computers that can–among other things–break the encryption that keeps our data safe and confidential. Some say it will take place in as little as two years, but even the most conservative estimates are for four years or 2030. In either case, it is time to begin to prepare your network for the coming post-quantum world.
To learn more about this risk, see my interview with David Bombal on Quantum Computing here.
When that day arrives, all of our encryption– and therefore all our data– will be exposed to anybody who has a quantum computer. Initially, this will be only nation state actors such as the US, China, Israel, and Russia.
No need to fret or stress as people have been preparing for this day for many years and have developed post-quantum cryptography (PQC). This field is in constant flux and recently one of the post-quantum cryptographic algorithms (HAWK) was found to be breakable by quantum computers. The point here is that this field is changing rapidly, not unlike artificial intelligence.
Some people have compared this to the Y2K crisis that took place some 26 years ago. At that time, nearly everybody was looking for a crisis that would break systems once we transitioned from a two-digit year to a four-digit year.The fact that no crises took place in 2000 can be attributed to years of preparedness for that potential crisis. Companies and institutions spent at least two or three years preparing for it and as a result nothing adverse really took place. It all went very smoothly.
For your organization, you need to start preparing now. To help you to prepare, Hackers Arise has developed a course on preparing your network for the post-quantum world. The training will be offered over 3 days October 13-15.
Post-Quantum Network Readiness
Outline
1.What are Quantum Computers are What Makes them Different
2. The Quantum Countdown: Harvest-Now-Decrypt-Later & Why Your Network Is Already Exposed
3. Know Your Attack Surface: Automated Cryptographic Discovery & CBOM
4. The New Arsenal in Action: NIST PQC Standards (ML-KEM, ML-DSA, SLH-DSA) with OpenSSL 3.5 & liboqs
5. Hardening the Wire: Hybrid TLS 1.3 & Quantum-Safe Tunnels
6. Post-Quantum PKI at Scale: Certificates, Signature Bloat & Real Network Performance Impact
7. From Vulnerable to Quantum-Ready: A Phased Migration Roadmap, Crypto-Agility & End-to-End
The post Post-Quantum Network Readiness first appeared on Hackers Arise.
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Welcome back, cyberwarriors!
Almost a year ago, OTW spoke about quantum computers and the risk of our encryption getting broken within three years. In March, Google shared its concern on the same issue, moving up its own post-quantum migration deadline to 2029. Some companies are migrating to mitigate that risk, but not many are taking it seriously. Eventually, a huge number of companies are going to get left behind with weak and breakable encryption. Hackers will only benefit from that negligence.
To help you minimize the risk and get an actionable plan with recommendations tailored to your company, we want to show you how AC-Scanner works.
AC-Scanner is basically a script for post-quantum cryptography exposure assessment. It maps your full cryptographic attack surface across TLS endpoints and SSH services, assesses every asset against NIST post-quantum standards and generates a structured Cryptographic Bill of Materials (CBOM).
Before we continue with the scan, you might want to watch a video by OTW and David Bombal on the risk of quantum computing being able to decrypt things at mass scale and expose session keys.
Docker is the easiest way to get started. We’ll start with the CLI version first, then show you how to get the web version up and running. They both work the same way, so you can choose any.
First install Docker on your system:
Loginubuntu > sudo apt update
ubuntu > sudo apt install docker.ioThen switch to root and pull it:
root > docker pull qubitac/acscanner:latestNow it’s ready, so let’s see the help menu.
root > docker run --rm -it qubitac/acscanner:latest bash -c 'rm -f /.dockerenv && cd /app/scripts && ./scan.sh -h'We’re only interested in the presets here. As you can see, you can test basically any of your assets.
Let’s choose some random Russian company for this scan. We don’t intend them to benefit from the results, we will just use it for demonstration to show how prevalent the issue is.
For our scan we used –all to scan everything:
root > mkdir -p ~/ac-scans/example.com && docker run --rm -it -v ~/ac-scans/example.com:/app/scripts/example.com qubitac/acscanner:latest bash -c 'rm -f /.dockerenv && cd /app/scripts && ./scan.sh --noinstall example.com --all'If you’re testing a big company, it will take time.
Results will be stored in ~/ac-scans
Here we only need crypto-bom.json that’s hiding in cbom.
Upload crypto-bom.json to the dashboard by clicking Load CBOM. You will see the overview.
You can already see the infrastructure is not PQC ready and has several critical issues.
The next step is HTTPS. Although 9 of their endpoints are using HTTPS, it’s vulnerable and the risks are high.
The scanner tried to fingerprint the SSH endpoints too, but they weren’t open.
Let’s look at the issues that the company has. It will show all the affected hosts with severity assigned to each.
Quantum risks may help tracking the progress of your migration. The results below are from a different company, but you can see they have only 3 PQC ready hosts out of 308.
Recommendations will help you address issues by giving you prioritized actions.
The recommendations were intentionally redacted by us to make them unusable. However, you can still clearly see how the page is structured.
Finally, your main goal is migration. Here it lists all the migration phases and gives you deadlines by which they need to be completed.
As you can see, legacy TLS should be abandoned by 2027 and hybrid PQC key exchange should be introduced no later than 2028. That applies to everyone, not just this organization in particular. The report gives clarity and orients your client so there’s no confusion.
If you don’t want to work in the terminal, you can use the web version.
root > docker pull qubitac/acscanner
root > docker run -d --name acscanner -p 8080:80 qubitac/acscanner:latest It’s available in the browser on http://localhost:8080/.
AC-Scanner is easy to work with if you use Docker, otherwise you’ll run into some incompatibility issues. The dashboard has all the valuable information and most importantly it’s actionable and orienting. You don’t just see the vulnerabilities, you get a guide with recommendations on how to fix them too. Your client will definitely appreciate that.
Want to learn how to prepare your network for the post-quantum world? Join our Preparing Your Network for the Post-Quantum World training, taking place October 13-15 at 3 PM UTC. Available exclusively to Subscriber PRO students.
The post Quantum Resistance: Scanning Company Assets for PQC Readiness first appeared on Hackers Arise.
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American Binary: Why “Mostly Post Quantum” Is Another Way to Say Vulnerable If you’ve sat through a vendor briefing in the last 2 years, you’ve been told your stack is...
The post Innovator Spotlight: American Binary appeared first on Cyber Defense Magazine.
Reference: GitHub
Bitcoin developers have introduced BIP-361, a draft proposal designed to prepare the network for a future migration away from legacy signature schemes that could become vulnerable in a post-quantum environment.
The proposal, titled “Post Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset,” was authored by Jameson Lopp and others. It lays out a phased approach for moving Bitcoin users away from older cryptographic signature types and toward quantum-resistant alternatives.
This is not a panic signal. Quantum computers are not suddenly breaking Bitcoin tomorrow. But BIP-361 matters because Bitcoin moves slowly by design, and cryptographic migrations can take years to plan, debate, test, and adopt.
If the network ever needs to retire vulnerable signature schemes, the planning has to start long before the emergency arrives.
Bitcoin relies on cryptographic signatures to prove ownership of coins.
Today, that system is secure against known practical attacks. But a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could threaten some widely used public-key cryptography. That is why researchers and developers across the technology sector have been preparing for post-quantum security.
For Bitcoin, the challenge is especially complicated.
A bank can update internal systems. A software company can push patches. Bitcoin is a decentralized network with users, wallets, miners, developers, exchanges, custodians, and old addresses spread across the world.
Changing cryptographic assumptions is not simple.
Coins sit in different address types. Some coins have not moved in years. Some users may no longer have access to their keys. Some wallets may be slow to upgrade. Exchanges and custodians need time to support new formats. Any migration plan has to balance security, usability, and social consensus.
That is why BIP-361 is important even though it is only a draft.
It starts mapping the problem.
BIP-361 focuses on a phased sunset for legacy signatures.
The idea is not to suddenly invalidate large parts of Bitcoin. Instead, the proposal looks at how the network might gradually move away from signature schemes that could become risky in a quantum future.
A phased approach matters because Bitcoin cannot afford chaos around address formats and wallet compatibility. Users need time to migrate. Infrastructure providers need time to support new tools. The ecosystem needs clear milestones.
That kind of transition would be one of the most sensitive upgrades Bitcoin has ever considered.
It would involve not just technical safety, but also fairness. What happens to coins in old address types? How long should users have to move? What about dormant wallets? What about coins believed to be lost? At what point does protecting the network outweigh preserving indefinite spendability from legacy formats?
Those are difficult questions.
BIP-361 does not make them easy, but it gives the community a structured starting point.
Some people will see the proposal and ask why Bitcoin needs to discuss quantum security now.
The answer is that Bitcoin’s upgrade process is slow because it has to be.
A controversial protocol change can take years to reach consensus, and many never do. That can frustrate developers who want faster progress, but it is also part of why Bitcoin has remained stable. The network avoids rushed changes that could damage trust.
Quantum migration would require even more caution.
It touches the deepest layer of Bitcoin ownership: signatures. A mistake could be catastrophic. A rushed proposal could divide the community. A poorly communicated migration could leave users confused or exposed.
That is why early discussion is healthy.
The proposal does not mean activation is near. It does not mean quantum computers are already a practical threat to Bitcoin. It means some developers believe the community should begin preparing before the pressure becomes urgent.
That is a reasonable position for a system designed to last for decades.
For traders, BIP-361 should not be read as a short-term price event.
Bitcoin is not suddenly insecure because a quantum-migration proposal exists. In fact, the opposite reading may be more useful: serious networks plan for long-term threats before they become immediate crises.
The draft shows that Bitcoin’s developer community is thinking about future-proofing the protocol.
The market should also remember that draft proposals can change, stall, or fail to gain consensus. BIP status does not equal activation. A proposal must be reviewed, debated, implemented, tested, and accepted by a broad set of stakeholders before it becomes part of Bitcoin’s rules.
Still, the topic is worth watching.
Bitcoin’s long-term credibility depends on its ability to handle risks without compromising its core values. Quantum migration may eventually test that ability. The network will need to balance security upgrades with decentralization, user sovereignty, and conservative governance.
BIP-361 puts that conversation back on the table.
Not because Bitcoin is broken, but because Bitcoin is important enough that its hardest problems need to be discussed early.
This article is based on the BIP-361 draft in the Bitcoin BIPs repository.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
This report is based on information released by GitHub. at GitHub
Welcome back, aspiring cyberwarriors!
Many of us are being pushed toward insecure messengers and social networks. These communication channels may be monitored and are not trustworthy. That does not mean private communication is impossible. Far from it. One of the oldest and most practical problems in cryptography is how to send a secret message through an open channel without making the message obvious to anyone who sees it. And that problem has already been solved very well.
The encrypted text does not always have to look like encrypted text. A message can be hidden in plain sight so that it looks like ordinary content, or it can be embedded inside something else entirely, such as audio, video, or text that does not raise suspicion. That is the realm of steganography. Cryptography protects the meaning. Steganography helps hide the fact that a message exists at all.
For most people, though, the real need is much simpler. They want a practical and convenient way to encrypt messages quickly and reliably. So let’s look at some easy tools that make that possible.
The workflow is always the same. First, the sender and recipient agree on a secret password or passphrase. A short sentence made up of several words is often better than a single word because it is easier to remember and usually much stronger. Then the sender pastes the message into the tool, clicks Encrypt, enters the password, and sends the resulting encrypted text through whatever channel they want, even if that channel is insecure. The recipient then uses the same tool and the same password to decrypt the message.
That is the basic pattern, and it stays consistent across different tools and platforms.
There are browser-based applications that can encrypt text very effectively, and they are often the easiest place to begin. But there is one very important detail. You want to make sure the encryption happens entirely on the client side. That means the message is processed inside your browser, on your own machine, and the password never leaves your device. If the server never sees the key, the risk of leakage is much lower.
That point is worth checking. A good looking website is not automatically secure. One way to verify local processing is to monitor browser traffic using Developer Tools, or DevTools, and see whether your password is being sent over the network. Another way is to use a firewall application such as Little Snitch and observe whether the service tries to communicate with remote servers during encryption or decryption. If the system is truly local, the encrypted message can later be decrypted either through the same browser-based Decrypt form or offline with OpenSSL.
There are a few websites out there.
The first one is Encrypt Online. It uses AES-256-CBC to encrypt text, strings, JSON, YAML and config data directly in your browser. It’s considered to be a strong, mathematically unbreakable encryption algorithm.
Paranoia Text Encryption uses AES-256 in EAX mode with keys derived from passwords using Argon2. That combination is strong and modern.
LOCK.PUB is another browser-based option, focused on creating encrypted online notes, polls, images, audio and a lot more. The content can only be accessed with the correct password.
For users who want something more flexible and technical, GCHQ CyberChef is a powerful open-source option from the UK’s GCHQ intelligence agency. It supports many encryption and encoding operations.
AES Utils is another choice, using AES-256-GCM with PBKDF2 while keeping the interface simple.
As a contrast, it is useful to look at what should not be considered a proper secure solution. MagicTool encrypts and decrypts text without requiring a password.
At first glance that may sound convenient, but from a cryptographic point of view it means the same built-in secret is used every time. If anyone knows the website and the service’s behavior, they may be able to infer or recover the messages. In that setup, the tool itself is functioning like the secret key simply by existing.
That is not a strong cryptographic model. However, in some situations, “encryption” without a user-provided key could still serve a purpose. For example, it might be used to deceive an adversary into believing you are an inexperienced user who does not know how to encrypt messages properly, when your real objective is to feed them specific information in a controlled manner.
Browser tools are convenient, but sometimes you want something local, traditional, and fully under your control. Linux, Windows, and macOS all have native or widely trusted applications that can encrypt text and files without relying on a remote browser service.
Common examples include command-line tools such as GnuPG, OpenSSL, and ccrypt, along with password managers, VeraCrypt, Cryptomator, and a wide range of similar utilities. These tools are often used not only for text messages but also for file encryption, container protection, and secure storage.
Offline tools have an advantage because they reduce the number of outside systems involved in the process. You are not dependent on a remote website staying available, and you do not need to trust a third-party server with your content or password. For many users, that is a better model from a privacy perspective. At the same time, it is important to understand that privacy tools still leave traces. On a Windows system, a digital forensics investigator may be able to see installation artifacts, program execution history, registry keys, recent files, shortcut files, jump lists, user activity traces, prefetch data and remnants of encrypted containers or text editors. Even when the content itself remains protected, the fact that you used a particular application may still be visible in the system’s history.
That is why privacy-conscious users often prefer systems that are designed to leave fewer traces by default. A privacy-oriented operating system, live environment, or hardened Linux distribution can be a better choice when your goal is to reduce unnecessary local exposure.
Encrypting messages is a simple and useful privacy skill. Whether you use a browser-based tool or you prefer offline software the basic principle is the same.
The right tool depends on the situation. Browser-based tools are convenient and fast. Offline tools give you more independence and more control. Some systems are designed for strong cryptography, while others are only suitable for demonstration or deceptive use. Understanding the difference matters.
If you want to go deeper into how privacy can be preserved on real systems and how forensic traces are created and analyzed, our Anti-Forensics training is your next step. We covered advanced techniques for preserving your privacy and understanding what investigators can still see even when you think you have covered your tracks.
The post Anti-Forensics: How to Encrypt Messages in Any Messenger or Social Network first appeared on Hackers Arise.
