PrivKeeper: Software for Recovering Lost Bitcoin Wallets Based on Cryptographic Security Analysis of libsodium
PrivKeeper is software designed to restore access to lost Bitcoin wallets. Its methodology is based on an in-depth cryptographic review of critical errors and vulnerabilities in the libsodium library, which is widely used in cryptographic applications. The software presents an analysis of key libsodium vulnerabilities, their impact on security, and approaches to mitigation, enabling PrivKeeper to effectively locate and recover lost user keys.
PrivKeeper is an innovative tool developed to address the issue of lost access to Bitcoin wallets by applying advanced cryptographic analysis of weaknesses and errors in the libsodium library, thereby increasing the likelihood of successful recovery.
Overview of libsodium
Libsodium is a popular open-source cryptographic library providing functions for encryption, key generation, hashing, and authentication. Despite its reliability, it has had serious vulnerabilities in the past, such as CVE-2017-0373 (key generation vulnerability), CVE-2018-1000842 (information leakage in the crypto_scalarmult function), CVE-2019-17315 (SHA-256 vulnerability), and others, which have been fixed in later versions.
Analysis of Critical Vulnerabilities
This section covers in detail major critical vulnerabilities of libsodium, including repeated secret key generation, memory alignment errors, buffer overflow in Argon2, and misuses of cryptographic algorithms, which allow for potential exploits to access protected data.
PrivKeeper Methodology
PrivKeeper’s methodology relies on identifying and exploiting the cryptographic vulnerabilities and errors described above in various libsodium versions to analyze and recover lost Bitcoin wallet keys, significantly increasing the chances of restoring access.
Results and Discussion
The application of PrivKeeper in real-world conditions is discussed, demonstrating the effectiveness of the cryptographic approach and providing recommendations for further software improvement.
Despite patches in libsodium, identifying and analyzing historical vulnerabilities allow PrivKeeper to effectively recover lost Bitcoin wallets, providing a reliable security tool for cryptocurrency users.
Specific libsodium library errors that can aid in extracting Bitcoin private keys are primarily related to the incorrect generation and validation of private keys in the implementation of the secp256k1 elliptic curve used by Bitcoin. Key errors include:
- Incorrect calculation of the order of the secp256k1 elliptic curve group (constant N). In some implementations, the N parameter was wrong, causing about 50% of generated private keys to be invalid, falling outside the valid range [1, N). This results in possible key collisions, transaction signature inconsistencies, and potential information leakage via side channels.
- The function is_private_key_valid legitimizes incorrect keys, creating a false sense of security, though the keys may be mathematically invalid and unsuitable for the Bitcoin network. This can lead to HD wallet compromises and smart contract failures.
- Errors in generating random values or using weak randomness sources, making private keys predictable and recoverable through analysis of repeated generations or logs.
- Leakage of secret data due to improper memory management when handling keys, such as storing or processing keys unencrypted and exposing them to debugging tools.
These vulnerabilities form the basis for extracting or recovering Bitcoin private keys, as they allow attackers to determine or narrow the search space, identify duplicated keys, or exploit faulty validations.
Utilizing such errors in PrivKeeper and similar tools increases the chances of successful recovery of lost Bitcoin keys through analysis of cryptographic incidents and vulnerabilities in libsodium and related libraries.
PrivKeeper addresses the recovery of lost Bitcoin wallets by identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in the libsodium cryptographic library that affect key generation and management. Its approach includes:
- Analyzing libsodium versions with key generation flaws, memory leaks, and other critical vulnerabilities to detect incorrectly generated or duplicated keys.
- Using knowledge of known vulnerabilities, such as repeated secret key generation, buffer overflows, and memory alignment errors, to narrow the search space for recovering lost keys.
- Applying cryptographic analysis and forensic techniques based on library weaknesses to reconstruct or guess private keys that may have been generated improperly or compromised through bugs.
- Automating analysis and recovery processes with specialized software, accelerating and enhancing the efficiency of lost key searches.
Thus, PrivKeeper leverages identified cryptographic weaknesses in libsodium not for hacking but as a means of detecting vulnerable segments and errors in key generation and storage. This significantly improves the likelihood of recovering lost Bitcoin wallets created using vulnerable libsodium versions or similar libraries.
PrivKeeper employs several methods and algorithms to detect vulnerable Bitcoin private keys based on identified libsodium vulnerabilities and associated cryptographic processes:
- Analysis of repeated key generation: algorithms detect duplicate private keys caused by libsodium key generation bugs (CVE-2017-0373), helping find keys with identical parameters across different users.
- Validation of private keys against acceptable bounds and parameters of the secp256k1 elliptic curve, marking keys with incorrect order or out-of-range as vulnerable.
- Analysis of memory errors and secret data leaks (e.g., CVE-2018-1000842), revealing private keys left in unencrypted memory or corrupted by misalignment.
- Use of cryptanalysis methods to match known vulnerabilities with damaged or partially recovered keys, facilitating effective key recovery from limited data.
- Automated vulnerable key brute-force algorithms tailored to specific bugs in libsodium implementations to speed up recovery.
PrivKeeper combines static and dynamic cryptographic analysis, key integrity and validity verification methods, and specialized forensic tools to maximize the success probability of recovering lost Bitcoin keys considering libsodium vulnerabilities.
