Even if Justin Drake’s prediction that AI could break cryptography proves correct, critics say “bunker mode” is an impractical suggestion that’s unlikely to protect your crypto.

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:

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?

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.

He argues that elliptic curves — the cryptography that underpins most blockchains — may be more vulnerable to such breakthroughs than hash functions because of their greater mathematical structure, which raises the possibility of a classical algorithm breaking elliptic curve cryptography.

Justin Drake wants the industry to plan for bunker mode. Source: Justin Drake

Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, weighed i n on Drake’s assessment, adding fuel to the flames of panic already ripping through the crypto industry.

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