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vibe42today at 3:17 PM1 replyview on HN

Many crypto wallets use a key derivation function (KDF) to add an amount of computation (and memory usage) per password tried - to mitigate brute force of weak passwords.

The increase in compute (decrease in brute-force cost) combined with price increases in many crypto tokens means brute-forcing old wallets can become worth it years after passwords were forgotten.

And of course even smaller, local AI models can now easily write optimized scripts to brute-force any given KDF function.


Replies

ndrtoday at 3:48 PM

how can that possibly work while supporting offline backup & restore?