Bitcoin Forum

This is a good idea. Simply use an address as your password, they are random and secure. Plus you can keep it in a list or address book and no one would think it's a password.

Think about it

Great idea but if more people hear about it, it will be less effective in the future.

good idea but as the persen above me said if u let everyone know that u use an address as password its easy to figure out :)

If one were to do this, one would be better off using an unused address.... that is to say, one that is not in the blockchain.

my recommendation is USE A PASSWORD that you ALREADY USE ON THINGS
cause if u forget it, it's so long money

lol, and if a hacker gets access to one of your passwords, it's so long money.

Block chain as password dictionary. Good idea.

<Facepalm>

Seriously. Don't do this.

Store your password into the block chain using bitcoin scripting.

We need a facepalm emoticon.

And I have even tryed to argue here how insecure it is to present paper wallets and casascius coins? Huh. If it is not a sarcasm then you guys are hopeless. Really. No single hope that you are really involved in cryptography. You are all obsessed by recklessness. Looks like there is some sort of selection among the users of this forum. Only careless people are allowed to post here.

Welcome to Bitcointalk. Enjoy your stay  :D.

A bitcoin address is a perfectly reasonable password - unless it appears on the blockchain.


Here's one:  19tQAuDxH8269C1MnNkPA47Kuvf5RzEHZy

and the private key: 5J7FqskNzixn9KuZrkf4saQRkzphWMRMvDdQCxk1Bh6WQYu6egG

Either make excellent passwords - feel free to use them

I remember a time when the password was something you could actually remember  ::)

Just in case it wasn't clear, I was being sarcastic. Please do not use the blockchain as your password notebook.

I use part of my vanity address 1234Ff3D19v5JPHfUXw9PBimQc9LGfa6iN. It's also my luggage combination.

It's in the name: pass-word.
Why call it a password if it's not a word?

I always thought it was a "word", meaning,  concatenation of characters from a given alphabet.

Worst suggestion ever!

bitpop it's a good idea to choose a password.
Nonetheless security through obscurity is not secure enough
and considering you have to store the password somewhere anyway,
this doesn't increase security

And this is the exact reason why I don't put anybody on ignore, whether warranted or not, for you'll never know when they'll share a nugget. As far as I'm concern, it's a genius idea.

And, who's to say you have to use one of your own wallet addresses? And, you could simply generate X addresses solely for password purposes, never funding them.

~TMIBTCITW

EDIT: Upon reading the rest of the comments, I see that there may be some concern for such a practice. Surely, once a wallet address is generated, a character or two or three could be change so that your now new password can no longer be found anywhere on the internet.

For instance 13Lfcc8obgmBDGadoPHu3MSbN4sjSyWWoN (just copied and paste from BC) would become 31Lfcc80bgmBDGad0PHu3MSbN4sjSyWW0N.

There's something missing here:  namely, context.
I don't see any mention in OP or the entire thread of exactly what you need this password for.
That would help me get my teeth into this idea.  For now, it's just airy speculation.  Let's have a real-world example, something specific.  Then let's examine the pros and cons.

I don't think it is a good idea. How many BTC wallets are there? May be 2 million. If a hacker can use brute force method, using all these 2 million available passwords, then it can be easily cracked.

FTFY ;P

I use "1" as my password on everything... Easy to remember and no-one ever guesses it... they always start hacking at 4 letters/symbols or more...

Great, now I have to change all my passwords!

You'll never guess the one I use next! It's not "2"... don't even try it! I was born at night, but it wasn't last night... It's another number!

This security tip has been provided, without liability, by a security expert from wallmart. Keeping your credit-cards as safe as your mail, since day 1.

Don't forget to donate!

I must say you are genius who came up with such a nice idea of securing password but I guess by sharing it on the forum you have made it less secure as anyone who visited your post shall be looking if a person has two bitcoins or not.

A password-password! Why didn't I think of that before! Going to patent this now!

That is as redundant as sha-256ing a sha256ed password. You just created exponentially more encryption collisions to breach your own security, not halved them. (As one might think would be the effect.)

If "DOG" is the password, but encrypted it is "CAT", and double-encrypted it is "FISH"...

Now "FISH" can be found by finding any collision that "DOG" has, which also results in "CAT", which will then result in "FISH". Plus, the collision of "PICKLE", "FROG", "MILKY", which also have matching results for "CAT" which results in "FISH", because they are a collision of a collision. (Plus they have their own large number of collisions for each one of those too.) Thus, exponential answers.

Same with just a simple password that is encrypted. It has collisions, so you can guess the password or the collision, and get in. As opposed to just having a password as an actual password, where there is only ever one solution. (Though, it would have to be a good password, which is larger than any "secure" hash-value. Poof, instant thievery stumped, they will be searching for collisions where collisions never exist.)

P.S. "Great minds think alike"... No one ever said they think correctly.

And to think, everyone has a huge dictionary of pre-found hashes, and possible collisions, sitting right on the bitcoin chain, and all the other alt-chains. Tons of "password results". And uber-computers finding more every day.

So when a wallet-address has a collision, both the original person, and the new person have access to the funds. Start creating tons of addresses, and HOPE there is a collision! Free BTC! No password needed. The network will validate the collision address, just as easily as the original address. Since, by formula, they result in the same answer.

There are 2^160 public addresses.  So the thought of a hacker making a rainbow table is not possible.
A public address is not a bad password.  As long as you are generating it with truly random methods.

When they say security through obscurity, this is what they should mean. Kinda hurt I was on the almost ignored list haha

Ps now that I've hopefully slowed down some thieves with this new idea, don't do it. But switching characters may help as he said. Or hash it eg 165 times

...rather than use another bitcoin address , use a random altcoin address!

Heck , make your own alt coin just to make your own passwords!

Great idea, can't wait for the upcoming alt coin generator

Memorize a simple password in your head 1234BitcoinEater, then memorize the hashing procedure, e.g. SHA256(HEXTOBIN()) then use it as your password.

If you have multiple passwords you could combine multiple one way hashing algorithms and add 1 to the end of your memorized password, then every time you need a new one simply add 1 to it and hash the same way to get a completely different password.

Here's another hare brained scheme for you guys to consider:

- Take out your camera and take a picture.

- Make a hundred billion copies of that picture and stick it everywhere. In USB sticks, DVDs, memory cards. Throw them around the house. Make sure a few tiny memory cards end up behind the sofa like loose change. Even wear one as an amulet around your neck.

- Use the sha256sum of the picture as your password. Very easy to do on *nix


- And if you need multiple passwords just append a number:

best ever  ;D

Now we can tie our BTC to our testicles, thanks for the great info.

I use the SHA256 hash of a picture of me standing in my kitchen to access my Bitcoin savings. I did not store the picture to be safe, because I can always take a new one but no one else can get a picture like that. I have not stored the picture anywhere so it's like a brain wallet but I feel it's more secure as that's more entropy than I'd like to just remember. I hope my house doen't burn down... I don't think so but maybe I should consider printing such a pic and taking it to a bank vault

Oh dear.... kuverty, please tell me you are not serious.

My thoughts exactly, hope my balls won't gain volume, need to see my girl precisely every 2.432 days.

To ease your mind, I was trolling obviously. Figured it'd be all right in this thread...

Phew :). I can imagine some people actually trying this.

People don't do that!

Also beware of Windows changing meta data and hash changing. Also almost anywhere you upload it online will modify it.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/17/crave_duet_usb_drive_cum_vibrator/

You can pretty much use it for any kind of password, like WiFi networks

Here's my password...b75a797f-0b1e-48a2-8d90-0c3c65c04769

I made it up just now using this...

http://www.uuidgenerator.net/version4 (http://www.uuidgenerator.net/version4)

Generate the version 4 type for max randomness...and check out the probability of generating a non-unique identifier..."The probability of one duplicate would be about 50% if every person on earth owns 600 million UUIDs."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier)

Take out the dashes/replace dashes with some other character/move the delimiters around/combine uuids/some other variation to boost randomness.

<hmmm>You can remember these long sequences in about 2 days...just write them out 20 times every couple of hours on the first day, and then 2-3 times on the second day. Then write them out about 2x per day about every other day to commit to longer term memory. Use a pen and paper - and cover up the last sequence you write to avoid the temptation to copy :) </hmmm>

Now I know why the dumpster behind your house has all those scraps of paper with the funny little numbers on them 8)

That's a good idea. Buy a couple routers, keep them in the boxes but use the macs as your password. It'll be in clear site but no one would ever guess. Stuff like this will help people use secure passwords and not forget them.

During a fire, run out with a backup usb and your routers.

You could use the bar code on your underwear. That way you always have your password with you.

Unless you change your underwear.

:D

On a more serious note, I use pw-gen.

http://pwgen-win.sourceforge.net/

It's free. Open source. And it spits out stuff like this:

*{g1AoHd"#a|CKU}'~sMZX5$g~C"mu._i?nv6V}#
aW{j1`~N}&KS/Hu37Y$(IN@1?1,T!~j>b4;lMt<|
Fvl*a4mu*TZy?BR/G8*8>Rk|N06%geCB[}5f5D$d
u6v.;CCH(5$yOL8Z`2:kIXyhSeSJoW6\`]:+Qo[+
7u`AXzT$gock^{)4:?xgIA{fCf'1>:itTkq]]T>G
R77zjQQm5+00TzWI*IJyNH_`Rhxb1po.A3(-v~fq

But if that busts your software or website, you can also use "simple" versions like this:

FV1AbKarhC3GvWXl8qo4Uu2BkXSUguuEdEGHgb4b
jHfQfqu5c20Mm67px9vsxd9IUwyntc7aeQYYHcU0
SQItOe4ENYsElnalkae0Eq7c3IyesIlRK1gxIYms
ztcgELJLHgHVVcsDB7HqP2a1NUiH0jnjPldEKbjx
ZZFE7uexc1dr4IqJDftnJFvx3tsxvA8T2wM08lNm
dZT5NXNSHBj9zNYh4bCQRkoUmsEgtQO7gdijoLgx

And if you tweak the settings, you can even come up with bitcoin looking passwords (limit the char set to base58check.)

I thought satoshi invented base58

Now why would I do a thing like that?

Why would anyone do such thing?  ???

He invented the base58check particular one used in bitcoin. There is another base58, but it's different. Bitcoin's version just skips the similar looking characters IO0l.

what is...this...underwear? :-*

How you're a girl