Bitcoin Forum

Other => Beginners & Help => Topic started by: samadamsbeer on April 04, 2013, 01:50:40 PM



Title: Verifying generated offline bitcoin addresses
Post by: samadamsbeer on April 04, 2013, 01:50:40 PM
I know I can save bitaddress.org to a hard drive for use as an offline address generator. If I want to double or triple check seeded key pairs from bitaddress, what other offline methods can I use to confidently verify the bitaddress pairs? I'm worried about errors and malicious code. Ideally the tools used would have independent development and not be based on the same flawed/malicious component source code.


Title: Re: Verifying generated offline bitcoin addresses
Post by: charliemaggot on April 04, 2013, 02:13:07 PM
Open up brainwallet.org in your browser, it's a javascript only site. Disconnect your internet. In the Generator page, click on the Private Key button and paste your key into the appropriate field. Verify you see the same address. Close page. Reconnect internet.


Title: Re: Verifying generated offline bitcoin addresses
Post by: CIYAM on April 04, 2013, 02:16:11 PM
I would advise you to use a computer that *never* connects to the internet to do this.

Browsers often save forms without you even being aware of it so just disconnecting and later reconnecting is not necessarily safe at all.


Title: Re: Verifying generated offline bitcoin addresses
Post by: samadamsbeer on April 04, 2013, 09:53:17 PM
Agreed on never connecting to the internet and using a temporarily loaded OS. On brainwallet.org - I thought I remember some threads here questioning that site since no one knew who created it. Do we now know the source?


Title: Re: Verifying generated offline bitcoin addresses
Post by: CIYAM on April 05, 2013, 02:37:26 AM
If you are using brainwallet.org then about the only thing you need to trust is that they have done the math correctly (i.e. that the address is correctly derived from the private key) and you are concerned about that then you might want to put both bitaddress and brainwallet in your offline distro.


Title: Re: Verifying generated offline bitcoin addresses
Post by: Severian on April 05, 2013, 02:45:37 AM
no one knew who created it.

But Bitcoin is ok?  ;)

CIYAM's got the ticket: use both tools to check each other's work until you trust the process.