Search for BTC coins on earlier versions of Bitcoin Core with critical vulnerability OpenSSL 0.9.8 CVE-2008-0166

In this article, we will create a tool that will generate Bitcoin Addresses (P2PKH) using the CVE-2008-0166 vulnerability. This is a research project to find BTC coins on earlier versions of the Bitcoin Core software client.

Random number generator that generates  predictable numbers  CVE-2008-0166

VAIM-OpenSSL 0.9.8/1.0.0 Detected

The critical vulnerability version  OpenSSL 0.9.8 CVE-2008-0166 was  populated with process ID only. Due to differences between endianness and sizeof(long), the output is architecture dependent:  32 -bit big endian (for example,  i386),  64 -bit big endian (for example,  amd64, ia64),  32 -bit big endian (for example, powerpc , sparc). PID 0 is the core, and  PID_MAX ( 32768 ) is not reached by porting, so there were  32767  possible random number streams for each architecture.

The Bitcoin Core software client uses the  OpenSSL. Specifically, it uses a function  «EC_KEY_generate_key()» to generate Bitcoin Addresses  (like a key)  to receive payments. Old versions of Bitcoin Core generate and store  100  keys in wallet.dat

A new key is generated only when a Bitcoin payment is received. Thus, the Bitcoin Core software client maintains a pool of  100  unused Bitcoin Keys  (addresses) . The state of the internal random number generator depends on what other calls were made to the library  OpenSSL prior to the call 'EC_KEY_generate_key()' . Challenges affecting the internal state of the RNG: «RAND_add(8)», «RAND_bytes(8)» и «RAND_bytes(32)».

So the research was to go through a lot of old bitcoin sources to find out what calls were made that affected the internal state of the RNG before the call  «EC_KEY_generate_key()». The call path changes between versions of the Bitcoin Core software client

The study focused on the following versions:

| Release date | Version |

Our goal is to generate private keys for each version of the Bitcoin Core software client, for each architecture  (le32/le64), for each process ID and for Bitcoin Addresses  (P2PKH), using a random number from a critical vulnerability. OpenSSL 0.9.8.

Ultimately, we will create a Bitcoin Address Generator  (P2PKH) and everything will be saved to a file result.txt

Everything will be stored in the Google Drive file storage

Making OpenSSL Vulnerable Again

For this we will use the  distribution kit  «Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS» from Google Colab

Earlier we recorded  a video instruction :  «TERMINAL in Google Colab create all the conveniences for working in GITHUB»

Open Google Colab in  Terminal [TerminalGoogleColab]

Let’s run the command:

cat /etc/lsb-release

«Ubuntu 18.04.5LTS»

Let’s go to  the «CryptoDeepTools» repository   and take a look at the details

git clone https://github.com/demining/CryptoDeepTools.git
cd CryptoDeepTools/05VulnerableOpenSSL/
ls -lh

Update and install  g++ libgmp3-dev libmpfr-dev

apt-get update