Bitcoin utilizes something called elliptical curve encryption in its processes. I remember back in the day, attending Bob Hettinga’s “Digital Commerce Society of Boston” meetings, and hearing this discussed then That was about 15 years ago now. I’m not a cryptographer, but from what I remember, elliptical curve encryption offered extraordinarily strong encryption without requiring an extraordinary amount of processing power. It was envisioned at the time that this method of encryption would be extremely useful in mobile devices.

My question is simple: Has the NSA broken elliptical curve encryption yet? And if they have, would they have it within their power to destroy Bitcoin?

If the NSA has broken elliptical curve encryption, they surely wouldn’t announce such a capability. But it does mean that if the US Federal Government wanted to, they could crush Bitcoin in seconds flat, inflating it beyond measure. By doing so, they would announce to the world that they can break elliptical curve encryption, but maybe that would be worth doing in certain circumstances.

But put aside the NSA for a moment. Theoretically, there is also what I would call the MC Frontalot problem as well. In his song, Secrets From The Future, he writes:

You can’t hide secrets from the future with math.
You can try, but I bet that in the future they laugh
at the half-assed schemes and algorithms amassed
to enforce cryptographs in the past.

The point being, that even the best cryptography today is likely to be broken, even by brute force, at some point in the future. So my question is, how is the Bitcoin development community planning to work around the MC Frontalot problem? Physical currency gets recalled and re-issued with new anti-counterfeiting measures added periodically, but what’s the equivalent for Bitcoin? I assume somebody has already asked this question, but I thought I’d ask it here in any event.

BTW, I have a new Bitcoin tip jar in the sidebar. Thanks in advance to anyone who hits it.

Tags: Bitcoin, MC Frontalot, NSA

This entry was posted on Monday, April 25th, 2011 at 1:03 pm and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.