Directory.

io Prank Proves Bitcoin Protocol's Strength

Jon Southurst (@southtopia) | Published on December 2, 2013 at 16:24 GMT
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Bitcoin users around the world can relax: reports indicating thousands of privat
e keys were released into the public domain have been dismissed.
A site called directory.io caused a brief panic yesterday when it supposedly lis
ted every bitcoin private key alongside its corresponding public address. Headli
nes around the web proclaimed bitcoin doom, with some speculation that bitcoins m
inor drop in value was a direct result. It was, however, quickly revealed to be
a false alarm, and then, a joke.
Reddit user fiveturns, claiming to be behind the site, said:
I m the owner of directory.io. This isn t an attempt at a scam. The first ent
ry isn t "fake". It is a private key with the value of zero. The next private ke
y is one, after that comes two etc.
All of these keys (apart from zero) are valid. It is simply a joke. Remember when
you ve been told that it is almost impossible to generate a key-pair identical
to somebody elses? This is a visual representation of that improbability. Look ho
w many pages there are! he added.
Heads-up
The sites lengthy header should have been a giveaway: as fiveturns wrote, the sit
e features a list of computer-generated private key addresses that correspond to
nothing in particular. Thus, there is no chance of your address being in there.
Directory.io is actually a worthwhile demonstration of how strong the Bitcoin
protocol is.
Directory.io is actually a worthwhile demonstration of how strong the Bitcoin pr
otocol is, and the (incomprehensibly massive to non-mathematicians) numbers prot
ecting it too. In all those pages, there isn t a key that matches any existing b
itcoin key.
A better guide on your chances of finding someone elses private key can be found
here.
Generating the directory.io list could be done with a 50 line script, according to
one expert. While they are genuine bitcoin private keys, they are all empty. Th
is was quickly discovered once users attempted to import the keys to their own w
allets.
Essentially, every time you create a new bitcoin address youre doing what directo
ry.io did, on a much smaller scale.
Private keys
While bitcoin addresses, or public keys allow users to send money to one another m
ore smoothly than email, its your private key that determines how much bitcoin yo
u have, and whether you have the right to spend it.
Private keys are (hopefully) guarded securely by wallet software or printed on pa

per wallets, as anyone who discovers that key can access all the bitcoins stored
at its corresponding address.
Having your real private key published on the internet would indeed be catastrop
hic, especially if youre holding a large amount of bitcoin there.
Losing your private key (either by deleting it or throwing it somewhere you cant
retrieve it) means the bitcoins linked to that address are gone too both to you
and the world.
Rock-solid
Its important to remember that, despite exchange heists, wallet shutdowns and ind
ividual hacking crises, the Bitcoin protocol has remained rock-solid since going
live in 2009 and (as of December 2013) has never been successfully compromised.
The bitcoin wiki says it all:
It is safe to say that the currency itself has never been hacked . However,
several major websites using the currency have been hacked, often resulting in h
igh profile bitcoin heists. These heists are misreported in some media as hacks
on bitcoin itself. An analogy: Just because someone stole US dollars from a supe
rmarket till, doesnt mean that the US dollar as a currency has been hacked .
Directory.ios creator even managed to earn some bitcoin for the work, and posted:
I did not create this to crash the price of bitcoin, and it didn t. People ke
ep calling this fake or not real. Most people know how to generate every single
bitcoin key-pair in existence. This doesn t make it insecure. It s secure becaus
e doing so is impossible. This is what people need to understand.
He added that his donation link was there "for people that found it funny some p
eople did :).