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Title: Is this secure enough? Post by: Kais on July 20, 2011, 12:02:33 AM I was just wondering if the steps I take to secure my wallet are sufficient...
I use bitcoin when I need it and when I am done, I add the wallet.dat into a encrypted .7z file, copy that to my USB drive, then delete the wallet.dat. Is this good for someone who uses bitcoin and does transactions several times per week? Title: Re: Is this secure enough? Post by: error on July 20, 2011, 12:11:34 AM If you're using Windows, then you need to worry more about malware. What steps are you taking to ensure that malware doesn't get onto your computer?
Title: Re: Is this secure enough? Post by: bitplane on July 20, 2011, 12:12:12 AM Maybe. Nothing is completely secure, you need to weigh up how risky is it for you to put any sensitive data on your computer, and how much BTC you have to lose.
How secure is your computing environment? If you are running it on your Windows PC with a dodgy license key and is full to the brim with pirate games and software, no antivirus and hasn't had an update in months then you shouldn't be storing more than 0.5BTC on it. Title: Re: Is this secure enough? Post by: enmaku on July 20, 2011, 12:18:57 AM Security is a non-trivial problem and as such any solution will also be non-trivial.
There are a few potential issues that jump right out at me, as error mentioned you're using Windows which is probably not idea. While you have to worry about viruses and malware on any platform, they're a bit more of a concern with Windows than elsewhere. Also, deleting the wallet doesn't really get rid of anything other than an entry telling Windows where, physically, on the disk it's stored that data - the data is still there. Your best bet is probably to use something like a TrueCrypt encrypted volume to store the wallet.dat. You can change where bitcoin stores the wallet.dat with the -datadir flag, which can either be added to the shortcut you use to launch bitcoin or added to your bitcoin.conf. This way you don't have to delete anything, merely unmount the volume when done. You could even store the entire app in such a volume though I'm not sure what additional security it might provide. If you're the kind of person who shuts down their computer from time to time or if we're talking about a portable system like a laptop you may also consider full-disk encryption. At the risk of sounding like a TrueCrypt salesman, it does this too ;D |