[en] The Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) is widely used by cryptocurrencies to authenticate transactions through signature. Signing with ECDSA involve the generation of a nonce, a number that must be used only once and randomly regenerated between each sig-
nature. This is particularly important as it has been demonstrated that reusing the nonce between signatures allows attackers to recover private keys and, ultimately, steal funds.
This paper presents a large-scale analysis of ECDSA signatures across several blockchains, identifying numerous cases of nonce reuse within blockchains (within-reuse) but also between different blockchains (cross-reuse), leading to a larger attack surface. Our approach combines cryptographic techniques for private key recovery, the deployment of honeypots
to collect ground-truth evidence, and the analysis of real-world incidents to better understand the scope of the problem. Notably, we recovered 3,620 private keys across several blockchains, revealing both cross-reuse. Our analysis estimates the potential financial loss could reach up to 101 million EUR.
Disciplines :
Computer science
Author, co-author :
Jacquot, Vincent ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Montefiore Institute of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Donnet, Benoît ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'électricité, électronique et informatique (Institut Montefiore) > Algorithmique des grands systèmes
Language :
English
Title :
Short Paper: Oops. . . I Did It Again. I Reused my Nonce.
