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Ethereum researcher warns AI could break crypto signatures first

Justin Drake urged holders to move funds to unused addresses, saying AI-driven attacks on ECDSA could enable private key recovery in about a week.

Reported · Written up by our desk · Ethereum

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake said artificial intelligence may be able to compromise crypto signatures before quantum computers do, based on concerns around the ECDSA signature scheme used by Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Drake urged the blockchain industry to begin planning for so-called bunker mode, recommending a controlled mass migration of funds to fresh addresses that have never signed a transaction, keeping their public keys hidden behind a hash.

He warned that when a wallet signs a transaction, its public key becomes visible on-chain, and if ECDSA were broken, an attacker could potentially work backward from that public key to recover the private key and drain the wallet.

According to Decrypt, Drake said it is reasonable to prepare for ECDSA being broken before Q-Day, describing the worst case as private key recovery in about a week using available hardware such as a large GPU cluster.

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