I wonder why that well-written advert doesn't include the fact that XMR's encryption is NSA-approved? Why wouldn't you want to use an NSA-approved encryption technology on the darknet?
Actually, the
NSA enforce its copyright so there is basically no chance cryptonote is a NSA project gone rouge and the encryption used everywhere in Bitcoin and DASH is "
NSA-approved", Monero also use AES in the hashing algo, I'll tell you what is not NSA-approved: the Monero's
elliptic curve (25519) that is responsible for safeguarding the funds (generating the privatekey).
Now time for the
interesting part:
Bitcoin uses the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for signing transactions. This is how you use your private key to prove you own the bitcoins associated with your address. ECDSA keys are derived from elliptic curves that themselves are generated using certain parameters. NIST has been actively recommending that everyone use the secp256r1 parameters because they are the most secure. However, there appears to be some funny business with secp256r1 that is eerily similar to the backdoor in Dual_EC_DRBG.
Thanks to the heroic work of Edward Snowden we now know that Dual_EC_DRBG was developed by the NSA, with the backdoor, and given to NIST to disseminate. The scary part is that RSA Security, a company that develops widely used commercial encryption applications, continued use of Dual_EC_DRBG all the way up to the Snowden revelations despite the known flaws. Not surprising this brought a lot of heat on RSA which denies they intentionally created a honeypot for the NSA.
DASH - NSA-approved backdoors, courtesy of Bitcoin.
Do you actually read what you post? Seriously? This article also links here, a great read. Obviously you haven't read any of it:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/satoshis-genius-unexpected-ways-in-which-bitcoin-dodged-some-cryptographic-bullet-1382996984You didn't have to go very far into the article you linked to read :
"All of this has been known for several months. What I didnt know until reading Vitalik Buterins recent article Satoshis Genius: Unexpected Ways in which Bitcoin Dodged Some Crytographic Bullets, is that a variant of an algorithm used in Bitcoin likely also contains a NSA backdoor, but miraculously
Bitcoin dodged the bullet."
So even if the rest of that article or Vitalik's article were too far over your head, that basic paragraph should be clear enough for even you to understand.
I'm going to include the ending of the article so anyone now worried but can't get through the "techno jargan":
When Dan Brown, the current chairman of the Standards for Efficient Cryptography Group, was asked about this, he replied: "I did not know that BitCoin is using secp256k1. Indeed, I am surprised to see anybody use secp256k1 instead of secp256r1
(the version that has a back door)." If secp256r1 is actually compromised, then since Bitcoin is one of the few applications that is using secp256k1 instead of secp256r1, Bitcoin has truly dodged a bullet
