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Other => Beginners & Help => Topic started by: acesup on November 14, 2013, 02:06:56 PM



Title: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: acesup on November 14, 2013, 02:06:56 PM
I generated a paper wallet a few months ago with bitaddress.org v2.4. I did it on an offline live-os (slax USB), wrote it down on a piece of paper + generated a truecrypt container with a backup.

With the rising value of bitcoins I'm getting a bit more worried about things that could have gone wrong. Could slax have a bad random number generator? Is truecrypt secure? Is there anything else I should worry about?


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: Birdy on November 14, 2013, 02:15:05 PM
If you wrote it down, you could have made a mistake, e.g. writing small z instead of big Z.
(Or just don't be able to decide if it was an 5 or S anymore -> having to test a lot)

When I wrote down a paper wallet once, I had to try 3 times until I finally got it right... (tested with import in bitcoin-qt).


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: acesup on November 14, 2013, 02:44:54 PM
i wrote it down correctly (re-typed it into the wallet details section to make sure). i didn't print it out on purpose, paranoid about the printer saving a history.


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: jcoin200 on November 14, 2013, 02:50:55 PM
Did you use a small home printer?  I doubt something you got for $30 at walmart will have any storage capacity.  If are you worried just transfer the BTC to another paper wallet that you generated offline.


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: Arksun on November 14, 2013, 03:35:32 PM
i wrote it down correctly (re-typed it into the wallet details section to make sure). i didn't print it out on purpose, paranoid about the printer saving a history.

Now that's some hardcore paranoia. I would be more concerned about the health implications of such paranoia as stress can cause real damage.


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: raskolnikovx on November 14, 2013, 03:39:29 PM
i wrote it down correctly (re-typed it into the wallet details section to make sure). i didn't print it out on purpose, paranoid about the printer saving a history.

Now that's some hardcore paranoia. I would be more concerned about the health implications of such paranoia as stress can cause real damage.

+1


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: dudebit on November 14, 2013, 03:52:36 PM
My printer sees all and reports directly to the nsa.  :D


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: irpirate on November 14, 2013, 04:06:16 PM
i wrote it down correctly (re-typed it into the wallet details section to make sure). i didn't print it out on purpose, paranoid about the printer saving a history.

Now that's some hardcore paranoia. I would be more concerned about the health implications of such paranoia as stress can cause real damage.

Better safe than sorry  :D
But seriously, being paranoid of the the printer saving a history is a little extreme


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: Damnsammit on November 14, 2013, 04:14:24 PM
I haven't used a paper wallet before, but now that BTC is shooting up so fast, I might have to print off a few wallets and store them.

Probably going to check out Armory myself.

Also, I hear that online wallets are pretty cool  :P


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: tampazeus on November 14, 2013, 04:22:44 PM
i wrote it down correctly (re-typed it into the wallet details section to make sure).


It is difference to retype it after 10 minutes and  retype it after few years. I have problems with serial codes i wrote myselves a while back and often I must figuring out what letter might be different. But after few guesses it is valid  :)

BTW I underlining big letters


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: Jacce on November 14, 2013, 04:29:06 PM
I don't think you have to worry that much unless you are saving some really large amounts of BTC :S


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: salfter on November 14, 2013, 04:30:36 PM
i wrote it down correctly (re-typed it into the wallet details section to make sure). i didn't print it out on purpose, paranoid about the printer saving a history.

Unless you spent thousands on an office color laser printer (like one of these (http://www.biz.konicaminolta.com/colour/c360_c280_c220/), one of which is just down the hall from my office), your printer isn't going to have any long-term storage to speak of. It'll have enough of a buffer to hold at most a page or two while a computer is sending it a job; if it's an inkjet, possibly not much more than a few lines' worth.


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: acesup on November 14, 2013, 06:16:23 PM
i wrote it down correctly (re-typed it into the wallet details section to make sure).


It is difference to retype it after 10 minutes and  retype it after few years. I have problems with serial codes i wrote myselves a while back and often I must figuring out what letter might be different. But after few guesses it is valid  :)

BTW I underlining big letters

as I've said I also have a backup in a truecrypt container (with a strong password of course that's only in my mind)

I'm not worried about losing/forgetting the keys, I feel that's taken care of.

What do you think about the possibility of a bad RNG in slax or truecrypt being insecure? Or any other issues that I could have overlooked?


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: Ali_G on November 14, 2013, 07:01:38 PM
I usually print them.  I once wrote down keys by hand.  I was also concerned about getting upper and lower case letters confused so I underlined all uppercase letters.  Might be helpful.


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: young3dvard on November 14, 2013, 07:16:49 PM
What do you think about the possibility of a bad RNG in slax or truecrypt being insecure?

That is always possile given recent Android RNG flaw

[ANNOUNCE] Android key rotation
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=271831.0


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: BarkinTree on November 14, 2013, 07:18:12 PM
i wrote it down correctly (re-typed it into the wallet details section to make sure). i didn't print it out on purpose, paranoid about the printer saving a history.

Now that's some hardcore paranoia. I would be more concerned about the health implications of such paranoia as stress can cause real damage.

yes, that is hardcore paranoid, dude! you are worried your printer is going to steal your private keys? i mean, i know that hackzors are getting more sophisticated, but i hope we don't need to start worrying about this type of thing!


Title: Re: paper wallet paranoia
Post by: icem3lter on November 14, 2013, 07:44:56 PM
Or any other issues that I could have overlooked?


Make sure the bitaddress.org html file had right hash.

I once saw discussion the bitaddress.org html was modified and private keys sended to email when you generated address online.

Not hard to imagine the bitaddress.org html could be modified so its RNG was not much random thus even if created in offline mode the private keys would be know to the hacker who modified bitaddress.org html