Bitcoin Forum

If you have lots of coins in your online bitcoin wallet,will posting that address in public like forums,facebook etc make it more vulnerable to hacking?
1.Should such addresses be kept secret as much as possible to keep them away from hackers eye?
2.If kept secret,is there a way for others to know how many wallet addresses holds big amount if bitcoins?

Nice,  okay. Could you please explain how posting a public key would increase its vulnerability? -  have you got an unknown method of spawning a private key from a public key?

Why bother...

No it want increase its risk of getting stolen. You need to worry more about the trust between you and your wallet provider. No online wallet is hack proof, but levels of mitigating attacks do vary depending on your provider. Right now, blockchain.info is the only 99% provider that I've seen. They if I remember correctly,  they give you the KEKey (key encryption key)

Such an improbable way to make a point. The answer is no. I'm sure the OP said online wallet so your point is moot, even if it was a local wallet,  what's to say it's not encrypted with sha256 and AES,  are you going to tell me that both of those standards are also vulnerable?

The address can be posted anywhere and be known throughout the world safely. There are many public addresses of organizations that have large amounts of bitcoin in them. There is no crypto vulnerability that will let you be "hacked" by merely publishing your address.

When you publish your ownership of an address, along with that comes a loss of privacy, though. Without special steps being taken, it is possible to discover people who sent money to the address, and we can see the address's balance and where you sent the money after you got it. You may put yourself in personal jeopardy or may invite more hackers to try to crack into your system if you are identified as being "bit-rich"

More importantly, though, wallets do not take special care to separate your public address funds from funds you wish to remain private. You may unwittingly reveal that you are the owner of other addresses. When you spend money, the transaction may be funded using both coins sent to the public address and coins sent to other addresses, indisputably disclosing your ownership of other addresses also.

It is discouraged to reuse an address, because to spend the money, the transaction (included in the blockchain) includes the full public key. This removes one security layer from the address. Other procedural faults, such as a bad random number generator used in the transaction signature generation, are then exposed to exploitation.

Yes keyloggers of course you would mention them, I'm sure your next scenario is that the OP in that situation wouldn't have an anti-virus/malware installed...  You don't even need them,  a simple firewalling utility tool like Zone Alarm to block outbound traffics is all you would need.

If your online wallet have many bitcoin there, dont post your bitcoin wallet because if you have many bitcoin they want to target you or they trying to hack you. Like in facebook if your facebook email and password are the same they try to hack and then they will find clue on your facebook profile, forums profile so that they can hack you bitcoin wallet.

I guess these large public organizations that have large bitcoins do not keep them online.
To sum up you agree that it makes such wallet more prone to hacking

If you go to blockchain.info I'm sure you will find wallets with $4,000,000 - $50,000,00+ inside them, where varying large quantities would have been spent over time.

Feel free to post your wallet address online,  it's called a public key for a reason,   please read this (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_Curve_DSA) It is mathematically improbable, intellectually ignorant, and economically unviable, to even attempt to compute a private key from any give public key in this century, and hopefully the next.

Some people did mention keyloggers, which I would say,  is a good point if you did manage to get infected by anything that would be interested in Bitcoins,  so yes, I'm sure you're wise enough to have any of these free Antivirus tools installed (if you're a Windows user).

Your best practice is to always generate a new address for every transaction. Then you don't have to worry about this stuff.

As long as the machine which has the private key(s) to your address(es) is secured then no, there is no way for anyone to steal your coins from your wallet, the safest key is which has never been online(cold storage).

Although, some people prefer only using an address only once and the reasons for that are listed here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address_reuse , read the part with "#Known_attacks", though I am sure this vulnerability was addressed in all modern wallet clients.

posting a public key wont generate a private key.. but..
think about social hacking.

if someone knows u are hoarding X amount. they will want to become your friends. worse case they earn your trust so that you click on urls they send you without you checking them which leads to your computer being hacked from the virus you downloaded naively.

imagine ur going through a divorce and u are hiding the FIAT in bitcoin, but your EX knows your username. she see's you posting a address with X btc.. now she owns 50% of it :D

you will get random private messages and emails from people trying to sell you fake promises, bad investments, scams. etc

if your doing something illicit. your username is linked to an address if you publicly reveal your address on a post. now authorities are one step closer to finding your real life name and home address(with some snooping of forum data and getting IP addresses)

so dont worry about someone hacking the public key.. worry about human greed and deceptive people socializing once they realize you have more then they have

It's a bad advise. Don't connect your wallet address with big amount and your person (avatar). If you need a public addreess, you should create new one (empty or with an small amount).
You don't know all the possible vulnerabilities in your OS, programs, routers, methods of social attacks, and so on.
Do not rely on antiviruses and other security software. As example, some scam altcoin wallets can steal your data and no one antiviruses on virustotal not alarm it.
And I met the other cases, when a very famous antivirus can't protect from viruses/malware cause is very fresh viruses and he had not got to the base yet, and a behavioral analyzer doesn't recognize it.

You shouldn't to attract an extra attention to your person.

Users like us should be very cautious to choose which bitcoin platform we are gonna have. Reputable bitcoin startups such as BitPay, ANX, and OKcoin are suggested to have.

I have never heard OKcoin, but I was told a little about BitPay and ANX, they are nice~

OKCoin is a Chinese company mostly working as an exchanger but also as a "a mobile consumer payment and lending app" whatever that means i am just quoting the last part!
ANX if i am not mistaken is a Hong-Cong based company which does debit cards, don't have any info about their legit or not.
Bitpay is a payment processor which is big and legit.

but none of these are any good option for a bitcoin wallet (what this topic is about) so i have no idea what he is posting these here.

If your online wallet has many bitcoins, it can be vulnerable mostly because of user stupidity rather than posting his address in forums ,facebook etc. If you know what you are doing, don't use shady sites, don't download all that there is on the net, and have a clean PC chances are pretty low that you get hacked, although the more you expose your address the more risk you have by doing so.
Still if you have lots of bitcoins, use just 0.20 BTC of them to buy a hardware wallet and have peace of mind, that your bitcoins will not be stolen.

I don't think it matters how many coins you have on your online wallet as long as you have a very strong password or haven't copied your mnemonic string anywhere for people to find. There are so many Bitcoin addresses with hundreds and thousands of coins and they are still inthere despite all the hackers in the world trying to snatch the Bitcoins in them. Why hasn't anyone stolen the Bitcoins of Satoshi Nakamoto already? Hardware, software, mobile, paper wallets all offer the same security and same vulnerabilities and if you maintain a proper security protocol your stash will be safe.

I only keep bitcoin in online wallets when I am about to spend that amount. The rest I keep in Armory.
Would you feel safe walking down the road to buy a newspaper with £10k in your pocket?

Some of the worst advice I've heard.
1) it's indeed improbable that someone can compute the private key from a public key
2) it's entirely probably that you will be targeted by criminal elements if they know you have a large stash
 2a) The cost of spamming you trying to get some malicious code on your system is minor.
 2b) The cost of social engineering you is pretty minor.
 2c) If you're entirely oblivious about privacy the cost of showing up at your place with a tire iron and beating the crap out of you until you open you stash is minor.

Depending on your environment the risk will vary. In Switzerland it may be alright to flaunt your stash. In Syria I would suggest being a bit more careful. As stated before; if you wouldn't flaunt the stack of gold bars you keep at your place then you probably shouldn't flaunt your bitcoin stash either.

As an added note; Anti-virus (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=679&redir=1) increases (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=714&redir=1) attack (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=693&redir=1) surface (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=456&redir=1). Good luck with your free anti-virus applications.

that has been the case for me, i keep receiving incoming request to be a friend of someone unknown, via teamviewer and other social network, also via email, obviously i ignore eveyrone of those request

even via steam lately, all people that are 100% unknown to me, i usually decline them without thinking, i don't care about friends

Tbh this thread is a joke. So you think that if he posts his Bitcoin address online someone will show up at his house and kill him for it?  Well okay, thanks for the advice.

If they know there's a big pay off? Yes, criminals will use that information (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Do+criminals+use+social+media+to+find+targets%3F).

Exactly. Your setup might not be secure, it might just be that no one bothered to try and break it. The larger the amount of BTC you knowingly own the higher the chance that you get targeted.

Beeing trageted must not mean that someone comes to your door and try a wrench decryption[1]. It can mean a variety of things, but overall its not bad advice to

#1 dont keep all your coins on a single address (or even wallet)
#2 dont tell the world how much you own

[1] https://www.xkcd.com/538/

I'm a ANX new user, could you mind to tell me more about ANX?

Also try to use kaspersky total security so that you are in safe browsing.. just accept the addons if you are using online wallet kaspersky detects it like block chain the are just login kaspersky will automatically appears the safe browser from kaspersky..  i never had a problem using kaspersky because its very secured.. also if you just want to transfer your bitcoin to other wallet make sure you use the bitmixer so that they cant track your transaction..

I think this website can give you some help. http://www.anxintl.com/

its not to be worry if you share your bitcoin address,its will be fine for your wallet.
1. its really hard to just use address and your wallet public key o hack your wallet,online wallet have good security and if you put 2FA,its better.
2. its hard to know how amount of bitcoin in your wallet if you dont share bitcoin address.

If your coins are held in an online wallet, they are vulnerable to confiscation anyway.
Thus, if coins are online, it is good to keep the address somewhat private.

But in general, it is ok to hold addresses public.

posting address in public media will not give you more chance to lost your bitcoin,you should know that hacking bitcoin wallet is not easy for hacker,the only way to hack your wallet is by give you phising email and links,and then you donwload some application or login.

so good, how do i turn this service on?

Bitcoin wallets are only as vulnerable as you make them, if you keep them on an offline storage device and keep the private key and any other data erased from any other PC and in a relatively inaccessible place, then you have a very, very secure wallet. A Bitcoin wallet itself is already quite secure, but any way someone can access it is a vulnerability point.

I keep all my money in my ledger wallet except for when I get paid by my signature campaign. I leave that money in my Coinbase wallet for a day or two before moving it to my ledger wallet.

That is exactly why I don't use social media. Because then criminals would target me. That is definitely the reason, not like it's a waste of time or something.

it will all come down to two important factors, how anonymous are you and how careful are you about security.
for example if you are protecting your privacy online and don't associate your bitcoin address and balance with your real identity publicly then there is no fear.
and also for security, you should use cold storage and have protections like antivirus and never click on unknown links

Wallet is safe i guess

Bitcoins Coinbase is best

As with everything that has value, there's always some kind of risks associated with storing it. Be it physical money, digital currency or something, there should be ways in which you could minimize risks by putting necessary security measures in place.

Its vulnerability is safe just like what others said , i think because our transactions are anonymously ,unless our bitcoin wallet address
Is shared that's not a safe way .it will be safe depends on our handling just keep secret like alias on wallets, our vulnerability will be safe in that way.

1. No addresses are relatively secure as of now and there is no way for anyone to guess the private key unless the RNG used is weak. If the RNG is weak, the address would probably be emptied by then. The only compromise here is the privacy since it ties the address to a specific person.
2. Blockchain is public so users would be able to see the balance in the address. You can, however, spread it out over various address while taking note not to spend-link to send directly to the different addresses.

If you're using P2PKH addresses, you're fine if you don't reuse address. If you use P2PK hash, you might be vulnerable to quantum attacks even if you did not spend the coins from the address before. However, this isn't a valid concern since quantum technology is quite sometime away before it can crack public keys.

Those are very valid points but I doubt someone would stalk you to get your Bitcoin address so that they could hack you. It doesn't really make you more vulnerable to hacking.

I think all the opinions here have a point, but there are important things to be aware of this and are sometimes considered normal and is probably trivial. That any act committed by others against us (wallet) it's because of factors out of ourselves. Sometimes the carelessness that we do not seem aware we are doing, so it's one more important thing to note is from ourselves, not to blame the wallet because stupid carelessness that we did before.

Use desktop wallets. they are more secure.

Desktop wallets aren't more secure than online wallets. Actually to secure an online wallet you only need to set up a strong password and the company providing the wallet service will take care of the rest while keeping a desktop wallet secure that is connected to the Internet can be a daunting task because you have to be careful what links you are clicking on and what websites you are visiting etc. Also it's easier for someone who knows that you are using a desktop wallet to infect your system and phish your private keys.

Same with an online wallet, with one more attack vector; the administrator or people with access to the server.

An online wallet would give the administrator or whoever who control the server with the access to the coins or your addresses. The operator of the online wallet can chose to run away with your coins at anytime or stage a hack and refuse to repay the amount. If you get infected with a virus, the hacker can easily access your coins from the online wallet by keylogging or RAT.

no,its have same security with online wallet,and of cours have a weak side,how if you lost your computer,or hacked by phising email or malware downloaded to your computer,too much risk. i just use online wallet with strong wallet,and share bitcoin address not make any change to my security.

The whole point of Bitcoin is that your stuff is safe as long as you control the private keys, so no, there are no realistic vulnerabilities. The only vulnerability is if the person that is supposed to take care of the private keys, does a bad job doing so, but that's not even a vulnerability of bitcoin, but human mistake factor.

The problem with sharing and address publicly is that people can track where the money will go from there, or how much money you got on that particular address. Hopefully Gmaxwell and the rest of devs bring us confidential transaction and coinjoin soon to get rid of this bullshit.

The last page and a half is just signature spammers saying the same shit over and over again. Seriously, fuck you.

Yes I agree the security system for bitcoin wallets isn’t the best as of yet. But I’m sure that when it becomes just as popular and used as a global payment like the USD; we would experience better security systems. Even though this might be the case; it would be best to transfer the funds to local bitcoin bank accounts, that are safe and trustworthy to lower the risks of being hacked.

There is no risk invlove showing your address public

I think you wrong, as blockchains allows us to see other people transaction. With it wasnt without post bitcoin address, it still belongs to the public if blockchains let other people to see our transaction. If you mean do not publish private keys wallet, I would agree. Because with the private key other people can easily break into our wallet. And just advice, keep your private key on the paper or something other offline. Correct me if, Im wrong :)
thank you

I dont think so showing you address to public in vulnerable ? How can you hack if you don't have  a private key. The important thing is that you hold you keys safe and sound.