Bitcoin Forum

   I'm a netdummy so forgive me for speaking illiterate to the illiterate and literate.

   If anything mechanical that utilizes a hard drive of any kind to store data is used to store bitcoin wallet files, it can malfunction. At anytime, something can go wrong.
   Anything that actually has working parts to it, or anything mechanical at all, is not ever going to be a safe storage vehicle for bitcoins. That includes all forms of computers, storage drives, hard drives and mobile phones. Anything that can break or could need repair is not ever going to be a good long term storage device for bitcoins or wallet files.
   
   I propose a special situation for wallet storage. First off, get a computer dedicated for bitcoins. I picked one up for $350 for a laptop. Getting it new is always best, that way you know it's not infected in any way. I know people sometimes pay more than $350 for a real wallet to hold fake money, so I think it's a smart investment.
   Then download Ubuntu onto it, then the Bitcoin client. Keep it offline 99% of the time.
   Next, I'm thinking Truecrypt to encrypt the drive from being hacked. If not, then GnuPG as someone previously suggested. Somehow, this data should be able to be loaded onto a card, while encrypted. That card, containing your wallet file and bitcoins is now safe, I would imagine.
   Also mentioned previously is that GnuPG has card integration with smart readers. This would , I think, by necessity, have to be readable/writable directly onto the wallet file.  If anyone knows whether or not this can be used effectively and easily by their grandparents or children, please speak up.

   This is completely nontechnical, for dummies and smart folks.
If there are flaws, problems, or issues that people find in this, explain away, please. People need a simple, safe way to keep bitcoins, long and short term, and currently, most solutions I have seen are not safe (trusting bitcoins to online wallets), (trusting them to computers and hard drives), and keeping them secured in networks of infinite terms most people could never understand.

   Mainly, it's important to note, that many people have thought it was safe to store bitcoins online. That's probably the very least safest way to store them. Next is on a computer hard drive or mechanical device. Machines fail all the time. Even servers, even though they get backed up, data gets lost all the time. All machines are unsafe for bitcoin storage.

Everything can malfunction, including solid state storage, a good strong electrical zap could damage it enough to make recovering the data impossible.

There are new computers that come infected, reported in the news before. So a new computer and old computer are only equally safe if they are formatted after booting from a safe bootdisk.



Non-technical dumb people are going to use whatever OS is installed on the computer. They are not going to want to learn how to install a new OS, even if it's as simple as popping in a DVD to boot (they might even have problems getting it to boot from DVD instead of the HDD), nor are they likely to want to install yet another "mysterious" program like truecrypt/gnupg to encrypt the wallet and even less likely to buy an expensive smart card writer/reader just for this.

Gee, my USB drives cost...$8!

and they have a whole linux operating system on them

they boot easily to almost any modern computer

and I've got them backed up in multiple places

FUD sucks

As I've advocated before, use paper to store your private keys (either as base58 or QR-codes). At least for the big stash / savings wallet.

Most people know how to secure physical things, and although paper decays over time, it does in a predictable way and is not prone to incompatibility issues.

Nothing you are doing is ultimately "safe". USB drives fail. Or do you own some brand of super USB drive none of us know about?

Where is the original file stored though? Or does it even matter really? If it's not destroyed, then someone else can get to it, even though it's printed, right?

How come nobody has done a video on this?

Yes. The original file should be secure-wiped from any devices connected to the internet. You could still keep a copy on an USB stick of course, that's more of a convenience tradeoff...

And then the method for re-recreating that on the wallet.dat file?
and would this be easy for dummies and convenient, too?

If it's QR codes you could use either a webcam or scanner to scan them back in. That could be made very user friendly.

Yes, it's some work especially if you have lots of keys, but whether that's worth it all depends on how much your security is worth to you.

So, you believe, ultimately, paper may be better than a credit card and reader? (What about the fact that paper is archaic and people like easy techie shit like plastic cards with info storage?)
I'm thinking, safest and easiest without compromising one for the other.

You could have a few keys... stash each one with a certain amount of BTC, and scan in only the keys for the amount you need. Or stash everything into one key even... but then an attacker could potentially intercept the one private key when you scan it someday to take some coins out.

This would all need a user-friendly management application, but it's not rocket science.

All methods have their use. If you want to spend the coins, loading them into a card, phone or your local PC makes more sense. For secure and potentially long term storage, paper wins IMO.

That's very helpful. I think we need a non-techie section or a "for dummies" section, so some can learn and understand without too much techno jargon. That's really the only way bitcoins will gain mainstream acceptance. Dummies have to be able to figure it all out and use it.

Archaic is an advantage here. It's the only place hackers cannot get to.

People are starting to realize this as hacking is becoming more and more prevalent all over the world.

Too many flashy techie cosy user friendly solutions running away with your money ;)

Agreed. You make an excellent point.
Instead of hackers, i'll worry about arsonists. lol

Create keys offline, print them on paper.

Import one for daily use for phone, keep only the ammount of cash you would normaly keep on person something which loosings isn't a major deal for you, be it equivalent for 50€ or 1000€.

Don't stack all the coins on one address.

One more idea, which need some work. Way to export private-key+bunch of transactions. So you could bring one key active and move BTC from it(burn the key it might be lost at this point), without compromising any part of your entirely off-line wallet. Most secure way would likely be to burn it on CD, and run ones connected to chain on network.

So store on one key, and when you need the BTC move all the BTC from it to other storage and day-to-day use wallet. So, every storage key is used only onces.


Paper or write only media is most secure, USB-sticks can carry infections... Anyway we can't ever get rid off issues on end point devices, but before it can be secured quite fine...

John Smith,
   What would be the precise method for getting these it to paper in these formats?
(The base58 or QR-codes)   - "Save As"? You need the original program for either one first? Can you explain a little, please.

If you don't trust your computer abilities enough to make your own securely, get a paper bitcoin wallet (http://paperbitcoinwallets.com) from Casascius or someone you do trust to do it right. Encode by hand the private key (see link in my sig) with an unbreakable one-time code. You can then put the encoded private key into emails or whatever. As long as you don't forget your passphrase, you're completely safe.

In five years' time when you want to cash out your now-hopefully-fat wallet, only then does the plaintext private key get near an internet-connected computer.

Adding an other layer is good, if you are absolutely sure you can remember the key for decoding.

Personaly for extreme security I support multiple keys even for this, best with geographicly separated copies.

You could make multiple copies, whatever the media.

Cheap easy media would be useful for that, so you could in effect make yourself a bunch of cards (whether paper or cardboard or plastic or engraved platinum is partly a matter of taste), in various denominations, and duplicate them.

Maybe have an app that asks not only how much you want in your hand but also in what denominations and media and how many copies of each.

So you could click icons or whatever to tell it gimme twenty ones, only one copy of each, twenty twos, two copies of each of those will do, ten fives, just two copies of those is fine too, ten twenties, better gimme three copies of each of those, and twenty hundreds, gimme five copies of each of those, one printed on the secure printer in the secure room in the possibly offsite place...

-MarkM-

Also a good point. So you'd at least want multiple copies.

Indeed. A possible workflow would be:

1) Preferably on a device without network connection you want to run an application that generates a number of keypairs. The private keys are printed to paper (or some other hyper-secure place), the associated public keys (addresses) are written to an USB stick or digital medium.

2) The bitcoin client on an online device is then used to send BTC to the public keys generated in step (1). It sends a configurable number of BTC per address.

3) When you want to spend the BTC, the private keys can be scanned/retrieved as needed, for the amount you want to take out.

So (1) happens outside the bitcoin client, (2) and (3) happen inside it.

(Optionally you could buy the paper/certificates for (1) from some trusted vendor. You really need to trust that guy though to not store your private keys anywhere else)

Not trolling but this thread sparked this idea up. Soon people will have there Bitcoin addresses printed on their body as tattos so they can scan their money when they go to the market. This is the part where the Christians say "OMG THE APOCOLYPTIC CURRENCY HAS AWOKEN!!!". But in reality I'm highly religious so not trying to offend anybody here.

That would have to be a centralized currency, not a decentralized one, like bitcoin, and it's completely off topic to boot.  ;)

Note for step (3), if you don't use for full amount, remainder must be transfered to new keypair from step (1). Once you have key-pair on device which is connected to net, you can't entirely dismiss possibility of it being compromised.

What part of "multiple" did you not understand?

Not entirely off-topic, I was trying to give suggestions as what mediums we could safely store addresses(obviously not private keys) but also adding a religious pun to it.

Safety of address isn't realy an issues?

Every used key is know anyway... Also, you need private key to make a payment...

+1 So you have to either take the risk that the other coins with the key will be stolen, or you have to send the change to a new pre-generated keypair.

====

The client support for this would be

One of:
1) a "send from private key(s) not in wallet" option, in which the private key(s) are provided by some external provider (OCR from webcam/scanner/user entered, whatever). The keys will be secure wiped from memory after use. This is not 100% secure of course, as someone could intercept it at multiple stages.

2) or simply import the private keys into the wallet. The problem with this is that it will be part of your wallet forever, so the on-paper key is no longer secure in any way. Then again, if you send the change to a new pre-generated keypair, this is not a problem.

(2) is by far the easiest to implement (it is already in a pull request, just needs UI...) so it has my preference.

and

A pre-programmed and easy sendmany. Import a list of public keys from a file, send each one a configurable amount.

Or even better, import a list of (address,label,amount) tuples from a CSV file or list of URLs. This is even more general. An external program as used for off-line key generation can easily generate these as well.

Yeah yeah please don't spam this thread, we're working hard to save humanity from the (financial) Apocalypse here :)

About the safety of addres isn't issues...question. If someone has your private keys someone the jig is up if someone takes it and then asks for you address.
Thats what I was intending to mean about safety anyways.

Hmm, I'm not in to math, but can't you connect public and private key to each other, if you know the limited pool of public-keys(the chain)?

Yeah your correct. My imagined scenario is this. If they have access to your private keys they 100.99(Repeating of course) have your public key regardless....

Assuming we're talking about savings wallets, or other wallets that won't need to be accessed very much, I'm surprised no one has mentioned CDs.

1) Send the bitcoins to the savings wallet.

2) OPTIONAL: Keep copies of one or more public key(s) from the wallet to add funds later. If you do this, you could create an empty wallet in step #1.

3) Burn the wallet to two or more CDs. Test the CDs, even re-import one of the wallets to ensure all went well.

4) Securely shred the wallet from the computer. Done!

At this point, most folks should be able to handle it. They can simply store the CDs in various places, just like with cash. Note that those with a little technical knowledge who can remember their password for a while can encrypt the wallet first.

CDs/DVDs are indeed the digital WORM-medium of choice.

But do watch out that sometimes they are very short-lived. I've had many CD-ROMs of 5 years ago already fail. I don't know how they compare to USB sticks on average, though... those might be just as bad.

a couple years ago i put a USB flash drive through the washer and dryer on accident (left it in my pocket) and it still had all my data intact.  still use it to this day!

Flash media is usually rated by the number of write cycles NOT by the age of the product.  As always I am continuing to recommend using the IronKey Product for storing their bitcoin data on.

The S200 Series of IronKey has higher quality flash memory has faster / more write cycles than standard USB thumbdrives.. When stored they are UNHACKABLE without your password.

When connected to a PC they have a built in backup software that can back the data up to your computer (Encrypted Format) with a single click.

In case of loss, the encrypted backups can be restored to an IronKey with a single click.

I recommend the use of the IronKey Basic S200 model.

https://www.ironkey.com/demo-basic

http://www.google.com/search?q=Ironkey+Basic+S200&tbm=shop&hl=en&aq=f

I love my Ironkey, but I don't imagine it to be secure unless the attacker is a mere mortal.  Google "Christopher Tarnovsky" and watch his videos from Blackat.  A FIB is not exactly a common piece of hardware, but you can rent time on them in any major city, and in a few years you could probably build one in your garage.

Also, flash chips fail, without warning.  Keep backups.

Video Link?   I have searched EXTENSIVELY looking for evidence of someone successfully hacking an IronKey... I would love to see what they are claiming.

The backup feature of the IronKey is one of the features that makes it so great for bitcoin.

I realize that ANYTHING is possible, but I can't imagine a technique that could be used to bypass the security used on an IronKey.

I do understand that when the volume is mounted on a PC and the data is accessible there is an opportunity for loss, but in a locked state, in storage, or while carried I can't imagine a vulnerability.

Thanks kjj

EDIT: I found the video where he is removing a thin layer of epoxy from a satellite card using acid and scissors.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnY7UVyaFiQ

My understanding of the IronKey is that it's electronics themselves are protected against a number of BUS Based attacks, which will cause their encryption chip to instantly wipe the private keys. (If you get that far.)

The type of flash memory used on board is 10-20x longer lived than consumer flash memory in the S200 models.  (SLC not MLC?)

Also.. my understanding is that the actual encryption keys NEVER leave the actual encryption chip, and the password counter is not susceptible to rollback attacks since it also exists inside the same chip and never enters the system memory.  (The unlock application communicates ONLY to the cryptochip & even includes an on screen keyboard if the possibility of a keystroke logger exists.)

The IronKey has been on the market for 4 years now, and I have YET to see one documented example of their design being hacked.

Please if anyone can find a documented case of IronKey security being circumvented please share.. I will gladly stand corrected.

I think I'll shoot an e-mail to Christopher Tarnovsky and ask him for his opinion on the product.

I feel like a cock for keep saying but use linuxcoin lol !! and make several backups of your wallet. If you use the secure bitcoin client included in linuxcoin your wallet is saved in encrypted space located /.wallet. This file is hidden but does exist. I recently stored some bitcoins on an encrypted wallet and threw it out in the wild to see if anyone would take the bait and steal the coins. So far noone has claimed them lol ;)

I don't think he's done anything specific to Ironkey, but he rips apart supposedly secure chips.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXX00tRKOlw&list=PLAA9393191173E134&index=31

Watch the videos.  The countermeasures that chip makers use to protect their dies are amazing.  The way he bypasses all of them is even more amazing.

I have tested LinuxCoin running on an IronKey thumbdrive using the portable version of VirtualBox (found here http://www.vbox.me/) works GREAT.

I didnt know enough about the TrustWorthiness of the LinuxCoin distribution to put my 100% trust in it, but it did work very well!

Insert and unlock IronKey which has the VirtualBox VM set as an Icon on the IronKey launcher.

Loads the LinuxCoin OS inside of a protected VM running from the IronKey device.

The one thing I WISH my Ironkey could do is directly boot from the flash... Unfortunately this edition of the IronKey is only available from Lockheed Martin in large quantities and high costs unavailable to the average joe.

Group buy?  Lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8syM9phtpA

Good stuff !! Glad to see my hard put put into use ;) You can trust me 100% I'm not a greedy person and I've not asked for anything for the development of linuxcoin accept donations. I want to see bitcoin succeed and all these rip off scum bags are not doing the reputation of bitcoin any good. I feel there's some really pressing issues that need to be addressed as quick as possible before we loose the hearts and minds of a lot of people unfortunately.  That's why I'm trying to make a point of promoting linuxcoin and trying to get people using my OS. Everything I can do has been done to make linuxcoin your own bitcoin bodyguard ;)

The one thing I would like to see is knowledgeable people join the linuxcoin dev team. I'm struggling to keep up with the workload :( there's documentation to write, software to debianize and I also need to port a lot of stuff over to different architectures.

The IronClad is nifty, but I think the minimum order comes in because they are bound to a specific IronKey Enterprise server license key when they are made, which would make them unsuitable for a group buy.  Also, they use whitelisting for applications, which would make them even more unsuitable.

I wrote Christopher a nice e-mail and gave him a link to the thread to see if he would make a comment.

For now I will hope that someone of Christopher's hardware hacking caliber does not get a hold of my IronKey.. Although upon examination it seems that I am unable to locate a security product that achieves the same goals I am able to achieve using my 8GB IronKey Basic S200.

I ask myself when is enough security enough?

I was able to verify that the S200 series of IronKeys do in fact employ the use of SLC based flash storage which allows for 100,000 to 200,000 write cycles vs 10,000 for consumer grade thumbdrives.

Awesome.  I would love to see him rape an IronKey next year.

Only problem I see with Linuxcoin is the user friendliness. I'm not sure I can install and run it properly. I tried to read and understand the thread and info. If I actually tried to do it it would be an entirely different matter I guess. But newbie dummyness is something to be considered here. Just because you can do it, does not mean the general population finds it easy to adopt.

Seriously, people need to make instructional videos for doing these things.
I think it's the way some people learn, or non technical people like me. If I read something complicated, I get lost following the thread of the idea, because i have not practically applied the info yet. When I see it on video, I can get the sense of whether or not I can do it as well. If people really care about the future of bitcoin, they need to make simple to follow instructional videos on how to do things like "paper wallet backups", "encrypted USB drives", "Linuxcoin safety and procedures" etc etc.

I'm not complaining here and I appreciate all the input and i'm still trying to wrap my head around a lot of it.
The thing is, i'm not dumb, but i'm not the most computer literate either. I have my own area of study and knowledge and I can see how sometimes people take what they know and understand for granted, but fail to realize how others cannot process the same data in the same way because they lack a foundation in which to process it. That's why videos help. If i'm intimidated by trying to read and learn about it, then Videos would help people like me, and once I studied the videos, I would be able to implement it without fear. Just saying...suggestions folks, make videos.

drgr33n,
   Since many people cannot follow a basic installation of linuxcoin, or may not want to jeopardize their own systems by doing the install, why don't you sell cheap hardware devices with linuxcoin preinstalled? Is that something workable?

Scriptkiddies perhaps can't, but a good and motivated hacker, sure.

Me too... When the IronKey was being introduced many articles were doubting that such a device could be made that was truly hack proof.. and so far to this date I have yet to find anyone who has been able to achieve such a feat.  To me it still stands today as a good example of a elegant and well thought out solution to a secure USB thumb drive implementation.

The obvious limitations to the security of the IronKey are not related to weaknesses of their design, rather seem to be related to usage scenarios, or grabbing the data while the drive is in a mounted and unlocked state.

Here is another VERY simple suggestion that anyone with minimal knowledge of adding an extra parameter to your bitcoin shortcut / script to launch bitcoin.

The default path on Windows for the bitcoin data is %appdata%\Bitcoin, you can access the path instantly by entering this as a path in windows explorer.

The simple act of moving your bitcoins to a non-standard (possibly hidden) folder and using the -datadir=path option when launching the bitcoin client will thwart the standard code used in infostealer.coinbit, as well as any directed attack on the standard paths used by the bitcoin client.

You can further improve this by leaving a "honeypot" bitcoin wallet on your computer in the standard location, it certainly can't hurt anything... This can provide a critical warning to a user that an attempt has been made on their bitcoins.   You could monitor the balance of that wallet, or last time accessed.   

I'm attempting to find something to run as a background service that acts as a tripwire to monitor my honeypot wallet... (or any access to a file named wallet.dat on my computer by a non-approved process.)

As an example of what I'm thinking here, you can download a utility called "Process Monitor" to create a log of which processes take an interest in your wallet.dat by adding a simple filter like this.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645

http://i55.tinypic.com/2058cr9.png

I'll hereby offer few options for anyone to own a secure wallet with Linuxcoin:

1) $8.00; Buy a 4GB Sandisk Cruzer at Walmart for $8 and follow the instructions in my sig on Noob How To

2) $8.00 + 2btc; you download the linuxcoin 2.1b, Unetbootin, at least one persistence file and install Unetbootin. Buy a Sandisk Cruzer at Walmart for $8. I will LogMeIn to your computer and prepare the USB for you.

3) $8.00 + 3btc; Buy a Sandisk Cruzer at Walmart for $8. I will LogMeIn to your computer download the files onto your computer and prepare the USB for you.

4) 4btc; I will send you by USPS Standard mail a prepared and tested 4GB Linuxcoin USB ready for you to create your encrypted folder and build your new wallet in that encrypted folder.

5) 5btc; I will send you by USPS Standard mail a prepared and tested 4GB Linuxcoin USB with an encrypted wallet that contains 1btc. Prefer that you supply the Password or I will prepare a random 12 digit password that is emailed back to prior to shipping.

Other options available. Just post/PM.

I'm working really hard on getting linuxcoin as bug free as possible and as user friendly as possible. There's now an easy installer for windows that can set up everything in minuets and everything you need has been GUI'd and put into a menu very similar to the start menu in windows.

I know there's a lack of documentation and information but once I've finished a few things I'll start on the documentation and put some videos together.

i have put a video on how to install linuxcoin with my version of unetbootin if anyone's interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_thiv1l1kU