What is the chance that a supercomputer finds a Seed with money

Question

I know that today it is almost impossible to find someones Seed. But what happens in the future. Will it ever be possible that a very fast supercomputer is checking million seeds per second to find Seeds with a balance. Maybe someday it will be like bitcoinmining for the people. They let many supercomputer run and if one of them finds a balance it will send the funds directly to the address of the miner...

Answer 1

The probability of finding a special seed is 27^81 = 8.71 * 10^115.

If we assume that there are 1 trillion seeds, the probability of finding a seed with a balance is 8.71 * 10^103 .

If we assume now a Computer can scan 1 Billion Seeds per second, it would take him 2.7647654 * 10^87 Years, to find one seed with a balance.

This is a pretty long time, I think we are save.

Answer 2

First, Iota seeds consists of 81-trytes (243-trits) with have three levels of safety [ 1]:

A security level determines the number of rounds for hashing, which means that a single seed can have 3 different accounts.

81-trits (low security)
162-trits (medium security)
243-trits (high security)

Technically speaking, a single seed has 3 accounts. The same key index on a different security level returns a completely different address. Make sure you keep track of your security levels similarly to your key indexes, as it will be needed for spending your inputs [ 6].

A seed of 81 trytes results in :

87189642485960958202911070585860771696964072404731750085525219437990967093723439943475549906831683116791055225665627 possible probabilities

or [ 2]

Very important:

To "hack" an address one needs to try random seeds, a single attempt can succeed with 1/(27^81) probability because it depends on the number of the addresses, not on the number of the seeds [ 3]

By the fact that IOTA using Winternitz's unique signatures (post-quantum signature) [ 1] [ 4] [ 5] You can not use the Shor Algorithm to reduce complexity or attempts, as you can with a Bitcoin address that uses Elliptic Curve Cryptography, for example.

It is a consensus among cryptologists that any value above 2^80 is computationally infeasible. So, by answering your question, the chance of a supercomputer finding a seed is pretty remote. Since a quantum computer does not take advantage of an ordinary computer, in this case

As for security levels, I'm not sure. But, as far as I know, they generate one more delay in the attempts since they are levels of hash rounds. And this (I'm not sure of the following statement) increases hashspace for ^security level (This is not the amount of possible seeds) and *security level by attempts

e.g. (Hashspace increment)

• 81 trits => 27^81 ^1 (low security)
• 162 trits => 27^81 ^2 (medium security)
• 243 trits => 27^81 ^3 (high security) [Citation needed]

e.g. (Attempts increment)

• 81 trits => 1* 27^81 attempts (low security)
• 162 trits => 2* 27^81 attempts (medium security) //Two times more attempts
• 243 trits => 3* 27^81 attempts (high security) [Citation needed]

References:

[1 ] https://iota.readme.io/v1.2.0/docs/seeds-private-keys-and-accounts

[2 ] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=27%5E81

[3 ] Why aren't seeds longer than 81 trytes more secure?

[4 ] https://eprint.iacr.org/2011/191.pdf

[5 ] https://www.e-reading.club/bookreader.php/135832/Post_Quantum_Cryptography.pdf#page=45

[6 ] http://learn.iota.org/tutorial/generating-addresses-learn-the-basics