It’s potential to brute drive some Bitcoin addresses, as a result of some individuals generate their personal keys in an insecure method. Any (non-zero) 32 bytes is usually a personal key. So working sha256 over a passphrase provides an apparently random, however brute force-able personal key.
Take sha256(“sausage”) for example:
$ echo -n 'sausage' | sha256sum
30caae2fcb7c34ecadfddc45e0a27e9103bd7cfc87730d7818cc096b1266a683 -
Load up bitaddress and paste that non-public key into the ‘pockets particulars’ tab to get the corresponding Bitcoin deal with, then look it up on blockexplorer:
$ GET http://blockexplorer.com/q/getreceivedbyaddress/1TnnhMEgic5g4ttrCQyDopwqTs4hheuNZ; echo
0.01000000
and you may see that the deal with held one bitcent for about 2 days in February 2012.
See additionally: “fuckyou”, which held 2.5 bitcents for 12 festive days on the flip of final yr.
So in apply it is potential to brute drive bitcoin deal with creation, however just for poorly chosen passphrases. These have been most likely simply individuals taking part in round with the thought of “storing bitcoins of their head” which is why they’re for such small quantities, and why they weren’t left funded for lengthy.
No deal with balances have been harmed within the making of this reply.