Bitcoin Forum

While thinking about the possible attacks against bitcoin holdings the threat of Electro-Magnetic Pulses popped up. So my questions are:

1. How susceptible are bitcoin holdings to Electro-Magnetic Pulses (whether they be highly targeted or a more generalized attack)?

and

2. What are some of the possible defenses?

Thanks,
Trader Steve

By hiding under your bed in the fetal possition.

Assuming that an EMP could wipe your hard drive, memory, BIOS, maybe even the microcode on your CPUs etc, they could screw your computers up.

Solutions are offsite backups, writing your keys on paper, burning your wallet backup to a CD.

write them all down on good old paper. or sae them on anything that is not electronical.

Individual wallets are susceptible if an EMP is strong enough to damage primary storage. Backups that are on media that isn't susceptible (which, I believe, includes flash drives that are not receiving power at the time of the pulse) would of course survive.

Because the transaction network is quite decentralized EMP would have to hit pretty much the entire planet to actually destroy it, though a more local EMP (such as an entire major technological country) would probably screw up a lot of mining, thus at least temporarily slowing down block generation quite a bit.

Keep your equipment in a Faraday cage.

LOL! Yes, that was my first thought but, assuming I was able to survive that and the subsequent fallout (pun intended), I would like to know that my bitcoin holdings were safe and secure.

A good faraday cage?

I don't think they're worth all too much if half the internet is in range of EMP blasts. Otherwise, just have an encrypted backup on a server elsewhere.

Anyways, try not to live where there's a high chance of a nuclear war.

Say if someone uses an EMP and knocks out the whole network...and then puts a whole ton of their own hardware online, wouldn't that mean they own 100% of the network? o.o

Doesn't have to be an EMP, the most likely thing would be solar flares/winds that knocks out everything on Earth....which can happen.

1. Would an EMP affect consumer-grade optical storage?
2. Would an EMP affect an optical 'master' disk, the kind that professional duplication companies would have?

Are flashdrives really safe from an EMP?


And btw, does a faraday cage still protects a computer if it's plugged on the wall and on the Internet (if not using fiber to get the 'net inside the cage) ?

Anything an EMP could do to bitcoins it can also do to banks...

I would say, online storage. As many as you can.

Make sure you encrypt before yo store something on line and use a good password.

You mean it can effectively empty the safe?

This is a very valid question.  You could always print a backup copy, which is probably the most secure method in this situation.

EMP = game over for ALL industries relying on electronics.

The banks *might* have 10% cash reserves. It might as well be empty in an EMP scenario. Assuming the EMP is powerful enough take out communication lines as well as data storage.

My bitcoins are safe because they're on a Paper Bitcoin Wallet.  (see sigline)

If you're talking about an EMP taking down large parts of the Bitcoin network, well, let's just say you'll have more pressing concerns if that happens. Most likely that would be the result of a global nuclear conflict, in which case you want to be asking yourself whether you have food, water and shelter to hold out for several months. If you survive that, you then want to ask yourself how you're going to survive in the post-nuclear wasteland the Earth has become. By this point you'll likely have forgotten all about Bitcoins.

This attack scenario is reduced to the question "What will we do if the internet is attacked?"

The answer is - nothing, routing protocols will allow traffic to continue as long as some routers are still active. If the network is swamped to the degree of nothing getting across, or massive damage, then we have bigger problems than protecting our wallets.

Given that the internet was designed to survive massive damage, I'd say we have an advantage over non-decentralized systems.

To protect myself from EMP. I encrypted my wallet (I used GPG but you can choose your favorite tool). I created a QR code with qrencode. I printed the QR code on a piece of paper. Keep the paper into a safe place.

Paper is only safe from hackers that don't act on meatspace as well, and also it still doesn't rule out the possibility of data corruption

Exactly.  It's hilarious how some people think Bitcoin will save them in some sort of global catastrophe.  Potable water, food, shelter, Guns/Ammo, and maybe gold/silver will be way more important in a mass EMP attack then stupid bits of code.

Faraday Cage.

CD/DVD backup.  Make one.  That's about the only storage medium I can think of that would survive EMP.  Even a flashdrive would be toast - it doesn't have to be connected to the grid (or anything) with an EMP blast.

Put your backup into a safe. Should work as faraday cage.

Have you tried putting a CD on a microwave oven? Is that too far from an EMP?

Faraday cage w/ a beefy series mode surge suppression followed by a good conventional surge suppressor.  Or you could go the cheaper and more practical route of online distributed international backup. In case both of these fail follow this guide:
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=zombie+survival+guide&oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=4948039778986383934&sa=X&ei=CQ8RTof2CI2osAKyjK32CQ&ved=0CCsQ8wIwAQ
 

No, the question was not how to protect bitcoin to save us from disaster, this is about us saving the bitcoin system for the future. .

Humanity does recover from disasters, you know. It would be nice to have bitcoin intact so we can carry on using it when the infrastructure is rebuilt. Cause you know, it was a hell of a lot of work to create!

Ironically, owning gold during a crisis, is next to useless also, because its value will be greatly diminished compared to vital commodities like clean food, water, and blankets. Might as well just save it, bury it somewhere and 10 years down the road it will come in very handy.

Wrap your head with material to make a Faraday Cage... it will protect you from anything bad. Tin foil is a good material for this.

Pretty sure that microwaves and EMP waves are completely different, but you could be right.

In other words: move from the northern to the southern continent. South Africa of South America.

Make sure you keep them under a highly conductive surface layer.

pardon me sir. but at this point these are the safety instructions:

1) Get the wallet on a flash stick.
2) Wrap the flash stick with kitchen foil.
3) Stick it in naturally protected smelly hole.


:D

again off-site backup is not the solution as it is not protected itself. and ol'paper wont hold your wallet.

+1 Optical storage is EMP reistant.

How can I print out my wallet.dat to paper, in letters/numbers, and then how can I make it back into a usable wallet.dat file?

i think that you will find answers here. http://www.casascius.com/

+1

Uncouple the Heisenberg Compensators!

In the event of an EMP you probably have much larger problems than worrying about your digital cash :)

Exactly.
Bitcoins should only be a part of your investment portfolio.
Other parts should consist of cash, silver, gold. Amongst others.

Use PaperBak. There's a thread on it here somewhere. Print it, then scan it when you need the file back

Depends on your setup. For myself, limited to none, but a large scale EMP attack would cause issues for a large segment of commerce regardless of currency. The most effective non-nuclear EMP attack delivery method is cluster packages of fully operational electromagnets and c4 detonators to collapse the field. Most missile systems don't have the power required to keep the magnets at full field strength before the implosion of the field, so only really large and slow planes would be able to deliver payload like this, and that shit get's shot down quick, especially considering that most anti-aircraft gear is EMP hardened.

Unshielded optical routers and cellular towers would probably be the primary target of such an attack vector, and then who knows, people might have to remember how electromagnetics and the internet work again. Might be a net positive from a recovery standpoint.


There are lots of published military manuals on building EMP protected shelters, if you're getting paranoid.

If an EMP hits where I live, I wont give two shits about bitcoins.  I'll be more concerned about the functioning of my firearms.  Thankfully they are mechanical.  I'll just hunt my own food.   ;D

Double encryption is barely useful. Read about the meet in the middle attack.

1. no, an EMP of sufficient power would induce a current in the circuitry and trash the thing.

2. maybe.  an EMP would result in a massive electrical surge.  the computer would be unaffected (beyond the effects of losing power suddenly) if there is sufficient surge suppression capability between the wall and the computer.

Btw, is the effect of a solar flare more like an EMP or more like a massive microwave gun?

both really.

on the ground level, EMP.  a large solar flare will release a burst of energetic particles, which will create a geomagnetic storm when they hit the earth's magnetic field, which will induce a current in electrical circuits

at high altitudes, and in orbit, it's a blast of X rays which can also wreck things.

however, the effect of a solar flare is too weak to meaningfully effect typical electronics.  you need very long circuits (like power lines or phone lines) to induce a meaningful current.  worst case is a widespread power surge and outage, like what happened in 1989 (massive blackout in ontario), 1921, and 1859 (wrecked havoc on the north american telegraph system).

an EMP bomb would be much closer and induce a much larger current, and thus would be able to wreck much smaller circuits.

http://datentraeger-museum.de/Media/Shop/lochkarte_01.jpg

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you assume a EMP wouldn't cause electrical fires and reduce your punched card to ashes.

you're going to need a fireproof safe or something.

Quite honestly, if an EMP hits i'd be far more concerned about a whole bunch of survival issues before any currency.

Is this something people are that paranoid about?

A Faraday Cage only protects in the case of low frequency E.M. waves. An EMP has such a fast rising time that it causes eddy currents in the wires of the Cage, driving the currents in the wires to the outside perimeter, increasing the effective resistance to such an amount that compensation of the fields is no more apparent, hence the EMP field will penetrate the Faraday Cage and still damage the equipment inside.
So what one needs is a massive metal enclosure, not a cage, and preferably made of gold, silver or copper, in decreasing order of preferability.
Then the thickness should be such that the surface penetration of the EMP is low enough at the inner side of the enclosure to prevent any damage to be done.
If one knows the characteristics of an EMP (I'm too lazy to look it up for now), such an enclosure can easily be designed.
However, it won't look like a Faraday Cage.

Simple solution...a computer made from vacuum tubes and relays...lol.  Since the EMP just burns out the P-N junction of the semiconductor vacuum tubes are not at risk.

It might be a heavy, hot and inefficient "thumb" drive but EMP's won't be an issue.

Seriously though, I agree with other posters...if you are in the range of an EMP you are probably at risk from a lot more than just your bitcoin being lost.

I think that's a misstatement; I'm fairly certain that AES works well as a composite function (with non-related keys), altho' I would personally use a second cipher for the second round. Even in the case of the 3DES MITM style attack, 3DES remained more resilient then just DES, just not 3x as effective.

For znort987, I recommend a chain of multiple ciphers for composite encryption, and unrelated random keys.

Everybody:   Print your wallet....  

Miners:  It is your honorable duty to protect the blockchain.

If anyone gets into this wallet within a week.. they may have the contents.  It's a lousy password.  I'll keep my eye on it to see if anyone claims the booty.  I'll post the password after the EMP blast passes.  So you can try printing it, scanning it in, or converting it...

There is at least 1BTC in there... if anyone else want to "Up the Ante" the address is 1FuP3q8EUp64ufmJouUu8g8wc6coxXLZUM

The image above was created with "PaperBak" or "PaperBack"...  http://www.ollydbg.de/Paperbak/

http://minecraftjungle.com/wallet.bmp

With that concept, people will have to trust you that you don't run with their money when they deposit a significant account on it. Afterall, you've got the "key to their safe"; the private key…

(Edit: Oh right, 2 more pages inbetween. Autopager fail…)

That wasn't too difficult ::) After you mentioned that it was a Paperbak thing, anyway :)

Oh btw, I'm going to assume this was an honest mistake, but the address you mentioned was actually not the address in the wallet. The address in the wallet is 1FuP3q8EUp64ufmJouUu8g8wc6coxXLZUM, but the coin has already been claimed.

Feel free to donate to that address though, I don't mind ^^ (Or yeah, support oxygen or marquee tags in my sig :))

I can confirm that someone claimed the bitcoin...  and yes.. I made a mistake on the address.  when I reloaded the wallet.dat.. it actually generated a new keypair.. when I looked at my copy of wallet.dat I had running on a PC it had 2 addresses now.  The one I uploaded only had the single address which BTCurious posted.

In any case.. the correct address was 1FuP3q8EUp64ufmJouUu8g8wc6coxXLZUM


If anyone would like to print the image to paper and try scanning it in for themselves.. the password was "bitcoin"...

It was printed out with 1:2 redundancy.. and a larger DPI than normal.. which should prove to make it pretty resilient.

You could try damaging the paper in various ways.. folding it, puncturing it, scratching off dots, etc.  See how much abuse it can take before it is no longer recoverable when scanning it in.

RchGrav

I missed the part where you explained why it's a misstatement. :).


If the user can secure the key of such system, he could as well secure the bitcoin key directly.

Your suggestion makes me recall the following XKCD comic (http://xkcd.com/538/), enjoy:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/security.png.

Revised in 2011-07-05 17:57: Formatting.

It's note barely useful, it's useful, just closer to 80% useful. Depends.

If the user can secure the key of such system, he could as well secure the bitcoin key directly.

Depends on his setup. But I like the comic!

If your neighbourhood gets hit by an EMP, where do you think you will get the electricity to run your computer with on which your bitcoins reside(d)?

Agreed.  If a nuclear EMP happens your way you're gonna have *plenty* of other things to worry about, like, oooh, WHY IS MY SKIN FALLING OFF??????

Google Faraday cage,
you can buy little bags or large bags that can protect your Thumbdrives and HHD, SSD or what ever from the end of the world.

Do common metal safes work like faraday cages? If yes, that's a nice 2 for one deal...

Pretty sure that would work as one...as long as its sealed...current only travels on the skin not to the inside.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-02-electricity-and-magnetism-spring-2002/video-lectures/lecture-5-electrostatic-shielding-faraday-cage/

You can watch the whole video for an explanation or just watch the demos at approx 30min and 50min.

We need bitcoins backed by bottle caps:

http://www.gamecravings.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ca07d709NukaCola610.jpg

I know where that has been  ;)

presumably, but only if the metal is grounded.

Not true...the item just has to be wrapped in the conductor.  Charge moves around the skin...never penetrates the conductor.  My earlier post has a link to an MIT video lecture explaining it.

What? EMPs aren't magic devices that permanently disable electricity by hacking reality...

They do, in a way. Depending on the material used (specific conductivity, magnetic permeability and thickness) and the severeness of the EMP they  protect to a certain degree.

Grounding is of no concern.

FWIW, modern data centers have EMP protected walls.

The datacenter where my servers are also has a flywheel UPS for short power outages, and a diesel generator that can supply power up to 4 days for longer ones.

They don't disable electricity but they can fry the stuff that brings electricity into your home