‘Bunker mode’ won’t protect your crypto, critics say

If rising geopolitical tensions weren’t enough cause for concern, now it’s crypto’s turn to go nuclear.

The industry is busy debating a cryptography doomsday scenario in which attackers derive private keys from public keys using a formerly far-fetched, but now potentially credible, AI scenario that places everyone’s crypto at risk.

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake called for “bunker mode” planning last Wednesday, citing “humbling” advances in artificial intelligence that could accelerate the discovery of mathematical attacks and ultimately “break” cryptography:

“IMO it is now reasonable to brace for the possibility that ECDSA [Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm] breaks before Qday, in the worst case in months not years.”

Drake thinks the industry should begin planning a controlled migration of assets to fresh addresses whose public keys have not been exposed, reducing the information a potential attacker could exploit.

But what is he basing this warning on, and is there genuine cause for alarm?

Is the crypto panic justified?

Drake’s concern is not just whether AI will speed up the arrival of quantum computers able to break cryptography, but that AI systems might also help discover mathematical attacks using classical computing that human cryptographers have missed.