I think it technically was not “brute forcing”, but specifically someone tried generating private keys with numbers 0-255, and surprisingly found a few.
Comment on What is behind the current Lemmy meme about 4 being a private key?
StabbingSky@lemmy.zip 11 hours agoNot if you’re brute forcing it.
balsoft@lemmy.ml 10 hours ago
Hal@piefed.nz 5 hours ago
So why did it take so long for someone to try it?
balsoft@lemmy.ml 1 hour ago
We don’t know whether anyone tried it before April 2025, because that’s when the vulnerable certificates were issued. If someone did try it before then, they would not find any certificates (as expected) and probably wouldn’t even talk to anyone about it.
Hal@piefed.nz 1 hour ago
It feels like the kind if thing that someone, somewhere would have a script running constantly testing for private keys with low values. That it went 18 months without being found is a miracle!
I think there’s a good chance people will be looking for this now so will get caught a lot quicker.
AmyAye@nord.pub 7 hours ago
“Time to brute force this key, I guess I will go get some lun…. What do you mean it’s already done? Who uses 4????”