Re: [Bitcoin-development] BIP39 word list

2013-11-01 Thread Brooks Boyd
I was inspired to join the mailing list to comment on some of these
discussions about BIP39, which I think will have great use in the Bitcoin
community and outside it as a way to transcribe binary data.

The one thought I had as the discussions about similar characters are
resulting in culling words from the list, is that it only helps to validate
input, not help the user if it is incorrect.

For example, if both cat and eat were in the word list, and someone
wrote down eat, but later mis-translated it and put cat back into
translator, the result would be a checksum error; cat is a different
number, so the checksum would fail.

As it currently stands, cat would not be a valid word (eat is the real
word, and no other number is cat), so the translator can throw a
different error which is more helpful (i.e. 'cat' isn't a valid word
choice), but still doesn't get the user to the proper translation.

What about if the wordlist included those words that are so similar to
each other that we only kept one of them and had them all refer to the
same number? I propose the wordlist have the possibility of multiple words
on a single line, with the first word on the line being the primary or
real word to be used, with the other similar words be included so that a
translation program if it wanted to assist the user could fix their input
for them (verbosely or not), along the lines of 'cat' isn't a valid word
choice; assuming you meant 'eat', which is valid. You might still hit a
checksum error if that similar word is still the wrong word, but as it
stands now, I know you culled a bunch of words from the wordlist as too
similar, but if I want to try and help the user fix a bad input, I need to
write a translation program with a full english dictionary alongside the
BIP39 dictionary.

I'd be willing to create a pull request for such an update, but before I
delve into that, does this sound like a good idea? I could see it devolving
into a slippery slope if every number in the 2048 set had a dozen word
variations (misspellings, similar words, slang terms for the real word,
etc.) which could get confusing of how similar is similar enough to be
added as an alternate, and the standard would need to be clear that when
translating binary to words, you only use the main word for that row, not
any of the variations.

MidnightLightning


 I've just pushed updated wordlist which is filtered to similar characters
taken from this matrix.
 BIP39 now consider following character pairs as similar:
 similar = (
 ('a', 'c'), ('a', 'e'), ('a', 'o'),
 ('b', 'd'), ('b', 'h'), ('b', 'p'), ('b', 'q'), ('b', 'r'),
 ('c', 'e'), ('c', 'g'), ('c', 'n'), ('c', 'o'), ('c', 'q'),
('c', 'u'),
 ('d', 'g'), ('d', 'h'), ('d', 'o'), ('d', 'p'), ('d', 'q'),
 ('e', 'f'), ('e', 'o'),
 ('f', 'i'), ('f', 'j'), ('f', 'l'), ('f', 'p'), ('f', 't'),
 ('g', 'j'), ('g', 'o'), ('g', 'p'), ('g', 'q'), ('g', 'y'),
 ('h', 'k'), ('h', 'l'), ('h', 'm'), ('h', 'n'), ('h', 'r'),
 ('i', 'j'), ('i', 'l'), ('i', 't'), ('i', 'y'),
 ('j', 'l'), ('j', 'p'), ('j', 'q'), ('j', 'y'),
 ('k', 'x'),
 ('l', 't'),
 ('m', 'n'), ('m', 'w'),
 ('n', 'u'), ('n', 'z'),
 ('o', 'p'), ('o', 'q'), ('o', 'u'), ('o', 'v'),
 ('p', 'q'), ('p', 'r'),
 ('q', 'y'),
 ('s', 'z'),
 ('u', 'v'), ('u', 'w'), ('u', 'y'),
 ('v', 'w'), ('v', 'y')
 )
 Feel free to review and comment current wordlist, but I think we're
slowly moving forward final list.
 slush
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Re: [Bitcoin-development] BIP39 word list

2013-11-01 Thread Allen Piscitello
The problem with this is that you might have word A which is similar to B,
but B is also similar to C.  So we scrub B from the list, someone enters B,
and we have no way to know if it means A or C.  It leads to a much more
complicated scheme to ensure that all errors are correctable.

Scrubbing A, B, and C is preferable, since it leads to no ambiguity and
there is no need to try to correct an error.


On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Brooks Boyd bo...@midnightdesign.ws wrote:

 I was inspired to join the mailing list to comment on some of these
 discussions about BIP39, which I think will have great use in the Bitcoin
 community and outside it as a way to transcribe binary data.

 The one thought I had as the discussions about similar characters are
 resulting in culling words from the list, is that it only helps to validate
 input, not help the user if it is incorrect.

 For example, if both cat and eat were in the word list, and someone
 wrote down eat, but later mis-translated it and put cat back into
 translator, the result would be a checksum error; cat is a different
 number, so the checksum would fail.

 As it currently stands, cat would not be a valid word (eat is the real
 word, and no other number is cat), so the translator can throw a
 different error which is more helpful (i.e. 'cat' isn't a valid word
 choice), but still doesn't get the user to the proper translation.

 What about if the wordlist included those words that are so similar to
 each other that we only kept one of them and had them all refer to the
 same number? I propose the wordlist have the possibility of multiple words
 on a single line, with the first word on the line being the primary or
 real word to be used, with the other similar words be included so that a
 translation program if it wanted to assist the user could fix their input
 for them (verbosely or not), along the lines of 'cat' isn't a valid word
 choice; assuming you meant 'eat', which is valid. You might still hit a
 checksum error if that similar word is still the wrong word, but as it
 stands now, I know you culled a bunch of words from the wordlist as too
 similar, but if I want to try and help the user fix a bad input, I need to
 write a translation program with a full english dictionary alongside the
 BIP39 dictionary.

 I'd be willing to create a pull request for such an update, but before I
 delve into that, does this sound like a good idea? I could see it devolving
 into a slippery slope if every number in the 2048 set had a dozen word
 variations (misspellings, similar words, slang terms for the real word,
 etc.) which could get confusing of how similar is similar enough to be
 added as an alternate, and the standard would need to be clear that when
 translating binary to words, you only use the main word for that row, not
 any of the variations.

 MidnightLightning


  I've just pushed updated wordlist which is filtered to similar
 characters taken from this matrix.
  BIP39 now consider following character pairs as similar:
  similar = (
  ('a', 'c'), ('a', 'e'), ('a', 'o'),
  ('b', 'd'), ('b', 'h'), ('b', 'p'), ('b', 'q'), ('b', 'r'),
  ('c', 'e'), ('c', 'g'), ('c', 'n'), ('c', 'o'), ('c', 'q'),
 ('c', 'u'),
  ('d', 'g'), ('d', 'h'), ('d', 'o'), ('d', 'p'), ('d', 'q'),
  ('e', 'f'), ('e', 'o'),
  ('f', 'i'), ('f', 'j'), ('f', 'l'), ('f', 'p'), ('f', 't'),
  ('g', 'j'), ('g', 'o'), ('g', 'p'), ('g', 'q'), ('g', 'y'),
  ('h', 'k'), ('h', 'l'), ('h', 'm'), ('h', 'n'), ('h', 'r'),
  ('i', 'j'), ('i', 'l'), ('i', 't'), ('i', 'y'),
  ('j', 'l'), ('j', 'p'), ('j', 'q'), ('j', 'y'),
  ('k', 'x'),
  ('l', 't'),
  ('m', 'n'), ('m', 'w'),
  ('n', 'u'), ('n', 'z'),
  ('o', 'p'), ('o', 'q'), ('o', 'u'), ('o', 'v'),
  ('p', 'q'), ('p', 'r'),
  ('q', 'y'),
  ('s', 'z'),
  ('u', 'v'), ('u', 'w'), ('u', 'y'),
  ('v', 'w'), ('v', 'y')
  )
  Feel free to review and comment current wordlist, but I think we're
 slowly moving forward final list.
  slush


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Re: [Bitcoin-development] BIP39 word list

2013-11-01 Thread slush
Hi Brooks,

I've been already thinking about eat - cat typing mistake. Actually there
may be simplier solution than having wordlist with duplicated words.
Because there's already a mapping of similar characters in the source code
(currently only in unit test, but it can be moved), when user type a word
which isn't in wordlist, application may try to use such mapping to find a
combination which actually is in the mapping. This may be disambiguous in
some cases, but giving a choice between few words may be better than hard
fail. And it is actually quite easy to implement. Although I think
application can do such smart suggestions and help user to recover badly
written mnemonic, I don't think it is necessary to standardize such method
directly into BIP. It may or may not be implemented by developers and it is
just nice to have feature.

Example:

user type ear, but it isn't in wordlist.

Regards the mapping,
E is similar to A, C, F, O
A is similar to E, C, O
R is similar to B, P, H

So application can calculate combinations of possible characters:

a) when app consider than the the user mistyped only one character
AAR, CAR, FAR, OAR
EER, ECR, EOR
EAB, EAP, EAH

b) when app consider than user maybe mistyped more characters, it may do
full combination matrix
AEB,  ACB, AOB,  ... OEH, OCH, OOH

and then ask user to select only these combinations which are actually
presented in the wordlist. In this particular case it may be only CAR or
FAR (both cannot be in the wordlist because of rules in similarity).

Marek


On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 9:14 PM, Brooks Boyd bo...@midnightdesign.ws wrote:

 I was inspired to join the mailing list to comment on some of these
 discussions about BIP39, which I think will have great use in the Bitcoin
 community and outside it as a way to transcribe binary data.

 The one thought I had as the discussions about similar characters are
 resulting in culling words from the list, is that it only helps to validate
 input, not help the user if it is incorrect.

 For example, if both cat and eat were in the word list, and someone
 wrote down eat, but later mis-translated it and put cat back into
 translator, the result would be a checksum error; cat is a different
 number, so the checksum would fail.

 As it currently stands, cat would not be a valid word (eat is the real
 word, and no other number is cat), so the translator can throw a
 different error which is more helpful (i.e. 'cat' isn't a valid word
 choice), but still doesn't get the user to the proper translation.

 What about if the wordlist included those words that are so similar to
 each other that we only kept one of them and had them all refer to the
 same number? I propose the wordlist have the possibility of multiple words
 on a single line, with the first word on the line being the primary or
 real word to be used, with the other similar words be included so that a
 translation program if it wanted to assist the user could fix their input
 for them (verbosely or not), along the lines of 'cat' isn't a valid word
 choice; assuming you meant 'eat', which is valid. You might still hit a
 checksum error if that similar word is still the wrong word, but as it
 stands now, I know you culled a bunch of words from the wordlist as too
 similar, but if I want to try and help the user fix a bad input, I need to
 write a translation program with a full english dictionary alongside the
 BIP39 dictionary.

 I'd be willing to create a pull request for such an update, but before I
 delve into that, does this sound like a good idea? I could see it devolving
 into a slippery slope if every number in the 2048 set had a dozen word
 variations (misspellings, similar words, slang terms for the real word,
 etc.) which could get confusing of how similar is similar enough to be
 added as an alternate, and the standard would need to be clear that when
 translating binary to words, you only use the main word for that row, not
 any of the variations.

 MidnightLightning


  I've just pushed updated wordlist which is filtered to similar
 characters taken from this matrix.
  BIP39 now consider following character pairs as similar:
  similar = (
  ('a', 'c'), ('a', 'e'), ('a', 'o'),
  ('b', 'd'), ('b', 'h'), ('b', 'p'), ('b', 'q'), ('b', 'r'),
  ('c', 'e'), ('c', 'g'), ('c', 'n'), ('c', 'o'), ('c', 'q'),
 ('c', 'u'),
  ('d', 'g'), ('d', 'h'), ('d', 'o'), ('d', 'p'), ('d', 'q'),
  ('e', 'f'), ('e', 'o'),
  ('f', 'i'), ('f', 'j'), ('f', 'l'), ('f', 'p'), ('f', 't'),
  ('g', 'j'), ('g', 'o'), ('g', 'p'), ('g', 'q'), ('g', 'y'),
  ('h', 'k'), ('h', 'l'), ('h', 'm'), ('h', 'n'), ('h', 'r'),
  ('i', 'j'), ('i', 'l'), ('i', 't'), ('i', 'y'),
  ('j', 'l'), ('j', 'p'), ('j', 'q'), ('j', 'y'),
  ('k', 'x'),
  ('l', 't'),
  ('m', 'n'), ('m', 'w'),
  ('n', 'u'), ('n', 'z'),
  ('o', 

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Message Signing based authentication

2013-11-01 Thread Luke-Jr
On Saturday, November 02, 2013 5:01:43 AM bitcoingr...@gmx.com wrote:
 In celebration of the 5 year anniversary of the Bitcoin whitepaper, we are
 delighted to introduce the Message Signing based authentication method. In
 brief, the authentication work as follows:
 Server provides a token for the client to sign.
 client passes the signed message and the bitcoin address back to the
 server. server validates the message and honors the alias (optional) and
 bitcoin address as identification. http://forums.bitcoingrant.org/
 Above is a proof of concept forum that utilize this authentication method.

Congratulations! You've reinvented what Eligius and Bitcoin-OTC have been 
doing for years! :)

There's no reason to ask the user to provide the address every time, though...

Luke

--
Android is increasing in popularity, but the open development platform that
developers love is also attractive to malware creators. Download this white
paper to learn more about secure code signing practices that can help keep
Android apps secure.
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=65839951iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
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