Bitcoin Forum

I have read several times on this forum where people said human error is what lead to vulnerability to attack but I read that air gap computer (https://www.pcmag.com/news/black-hat-researcher-shows-why-air-gaps-wont-protect-your-data) was recommended several time on this forum is not that secure while  Malwarebytes was also said to work base on how it was programmed, that is also not that secure and I believe in the next 5-10years Bitcoin price will reach 6digit and after this happens crypto holders will be the major target of online theft.

As a preparation for what may happen now and in the future, what are the 0% error/100% step a crypto holder or investors need to follow to avoid been expose or securely save his investment from attackers?

There is no such thing as 100% secure. As that article shows, there is always a way in.

However, hardware wallets and air-gapped computers provide a very high level of security that may be good enough for most people to protect against all but the most unlikely attacks.

Crypto holders have already been the target for hackers for a long time, you don't need 6-figure Bitcoin price to have that.

I personally never saw any posts that say that their airgapped wallet has been hacked. If it ever happened, it's incredibly rare. While relying on an antivirus to protect your hot wallet is definitely not reliable. You can never get the perfect thing, but you should be striving to get the best thing possible, which in this case is an airgapped machine or a hardware wallet.

Im in agreement with both responses ghat have been given and its no new news in the cryptosphere or even within our world today that crypto uses gets targeted with the values attached to cryptos today and NFT has even stepped into the picture. It's very difficult for individual accounts to get hacked, I guess 8 haven't heard of any especially when it's got to do with seed phrase and private key secured wallet in contrasts to the exchanger based accounts/wallets. The over looked part to the security is the anonymity that crypto provides.  Ots a perfect cover for safety as your completely out of the picture for direct attacks. All that is left is for you to find a way to keeping the you keys safe either by using cold storage and other forms of hardware wallets.

I wonder, how do hackers attack you if they don't know you? They do need some data first about you don't they? As long as you don't fall for traps, don't click infected links or share specific information about your IP address, is there any way for them to blindly identify and attack you?

it's true because basically bitcoin is one of the references for altcoins to adjust prices, but not all altcoins refer to bitcoin in the sense that only those connected to bitcoin can be said to be like that. There are many examples of altcoins that don't follow bitcoin like bitcoin cash etc.
Don't generalize all altcoins are all bitcoin because some are not.

When it comes to safety then you should consider this as a long term hodler.

•Never save your keys or phrases online
•Never click links randomly
•Go for hardware wallet
•Never disclose that you do posses big stash of coins online or offline

Just stick with the basics and you would be fine.

Unless you are a high profile person you are probably safe from most of the more technical attacks and a hardware like a Trezor would probably be enough for all of your activities. The investment at first might suck a little but the only other equivalent is making a offline wallet but you lose some of the functionality and bring in extra work if you ever need to bring that wallet online when your trading.

Yes, a hardware wallet should be good enough and not be paranoid for such brute force attack or hacks unless you have been attacked physically). You just have to practice safe hygiene as pointed out by others.

For air-gapped pc, you can read everything here: Even air-gapped wallets aren't safe... (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3385398.0)

There isn't a 100% perfect solution to actually securing your coins, there are, however, secure options, that could potentially help you in guarding them. Others have said it themselves already, and simply speaking, a bit of DYOR would result in what you easily want. Other tips to follow would be to stop spreading info about yourself and your investments/assets online? Just like how a thief could plan out to steal from a house where an owner is a person who updates his and his family's whereabouts daily, giving out personal info about you could easily lead to you're assets being compromised. Just keep a low profile, do most transactions in the safety of your home, and do the basics of having a secure way to buy and store your assets.

You're minimizing the number of attack vectors by the choices of wallet that you make.

An air-gapped hardware wallet would probably suffice for most uses. Air-gapped wallets are secure because you're eliminating the most common attack vector; malware or rather the way for malware to communicate. The problem being that most users don't know how to properly set up and maintain one. As with the side-channel attacks, secp256k1 has properties that minimizes leaks with the side-channel so it isn't that great of a concern. Side-channel attacks are generally far more expensive and requires more technical expertise.

Hacking means unauthorized access, and this access can be physical or via the Internet. An air gap computer that is not connected to the Internet increases your security by ensuring that the device has not and will not connect to the Internet in any way.
You still have another problem, which is the physical access to the device. As long as you ensure these two things and the private keys are randomly generated, you are safe.

Hardware wallets provide these settings easily for those who do not know how to do it.

Although both Ledger and Trezor devices have had vulnerabilities identified in them (mostly now patched, and the one we know of which isn't patchable is mitigatable with a passphrase), I'm not actually aware of any of these vulnerabilities being successfully exploited in the wild in order to steal someone's coins. Literally 100% of the cases I have seen of coins being stolen from a hardware wallet are down to user error - falling for a scam, signing an incorrect transaction, entering their seed phrase somewhere, etc.

Even if someone out there has had their hardware device cracked or a vulnerability exploited, in >99.9% of cases the weakest link is the user. The same holds true for airgapped wallets. Yes, theoretically an attacker with enough resources could extract private keys by listening to the speed of your fan, but in reality what will actually happen is that you will accidentally connect to the internet, or sign the wrong transaction, or expose your seed phrase, etc.

The easiest way to achieve a very good level of security with minimal risk of messing up is to buy a hardware wallet and follow the instructions to the letter, including not exposing your seed phrase.

There's no actual way to ensure that the private keys are randomly generated numbers. There are ways to avoid being physically or digitally compromised, such as with malware or by verifying the authentication of the software, sure. But, there no ways to confirm digitally that what you're seeing is a random number.

An attacker could choose a certain range of the secp256k1 and returned you each number's hash. It'd look pretty much random, but it would be known to him.

It seems that with the continued development of bitcoin, which may reach a significant price (which can be 6 digits), it will certainly cause many problems that will occur. at the current price, there are many who commit fraud in all kinds of ways that make people who have bitcoins can be tempted to make mistakes.

so it's natural that the more exciting bitcoin, the more people will try to do things that can trick those who have bitcoins make mistakes or even get stolen, but it's not that easy and it can also be ensured that protection tools to prevent them from being taken will also progress rapidly. so that in the end it all goes back to each individual person, whether they can still be tricked in a very systematic way by the fraudster or he already knows not to be deceived.

Probably the best way is to not put all of your eggs in one basket. But that becomes problematic, as then you have to fight your own memory.

Computers that are connected to the internet aren't safe. Period. Even the US's national finance credit firm had all of its data hacked. Some are safer than others.

1) It is more of a personal belief that a linux computer without systemd  https://nosystemd.org/ (https://nosystemd.org/) is more safe than others, but it's just a hunch.

2) You can get and install your own phone software with https://sailfishos.org/ (https://sailfishos.org/), which works with a lot (but not all, like slack) android software, and does OTP authentication.

3) You can have your bitcoin keys offline, never touching an online computer. You need a computer for initial generation of a send to address, which could be generated in memory that won't be stored (be very careful though..). You can split up the key into two written halves (make back ups).

The most important thing is to avoid disclosing your information (name, address, and phone number) when buying HW, because the Ledger database hacking case shows us how important that step is, no matter how much one thinks the risk that has arisen from it all is minimal. Also, as an additional security, a passphrase should be placed on the main account and kept separate from the seed phase - preferably in different locations.

In the end, it all comes down to how much everyone protects themselves, because in the event that something bad happens, a positive outcome is very unlikely.

1.Crypto holders are and always will be a major target for online theft.The Bitcoin price doesn't matter.
As long as the Bitcoin price is above zero,hackers and scammers will always try to steal BTC.

2.There's no "0%error/100% step...Humans are not perfect.Technology isn't perfect as well....

So far, security has only been on ourselves, all must be more careful to save with extra security, it's not necessarily safe..
Personally, in my opinion, if you have a lot of assets, it's better if you don't store it in one wallet, but you have to have multiple wallets to store your email and don't let many people know. have assetsa lot..

I don't to there is any way to stop the continuous stealing of cryptocurrency funds because the more Bitcoin becomes expensive the more the sophisticated strategy that will be used against crypto investors to do away with there funds. I don't think this could stop because of anonymous privacy cryptocurrency has in getting a theft.

I do think that it all starts from protecting your own device from cyber attacks, being more responsible, not downloading random stuff off the websites and at the same time using safe apps. You do not know what can happen and it usually will start from as small as opening an email.
It's all about personal safety. I do think that the more people have to realize this and also think about how safe their internet connection is. The strategy is simple.
Use secure wallets, keep changing your address every once in a while. Also sharing your information with anyone, never goes well, not even your own family members.
You can use a simple one like Samourai but it would still work.

When you compare to the fact that most people use Windows, which is pretty much spyware, almost any Linux distro is a step up.

You should always have more than one back up, so if you are going to split your seed phrase in to two or pieces, each piece needs to be backed up at least twice, leaving you with at least four separate back ups. At that point, it can become difficult to have enough separate secure locations to house all your back ups.

There is no such thing as a 100% safe apps. Even apps and software which are open source and well examined by the community can be found to have critical vulnerabilities, or could deploy a malicious patch, or something along those lines. The less software and fewer apps you download and install, the better. Ideally, your crypto wallets should be on an airgapped computer which runs an OS, your wallet software, and nothing else.

Why would side-channel attacks be far more expensive? I get the point that it requires a lot more expertise, but once you have the expertise, I don't think it is that expensive is it? Of course, it does depend on the type of side-channel attack, but what about this one?

"https://hackaday.com/2019/09/13/side-channel-attack-shows-vulnerabilities-of-cryptocurrency-wallets/"

You could argue it is expensive to set up, but once it is set up you could use it for as long as it is feasible.

i'm not a computer/security expert even i know a little bit about safety in online. nobody can guarantee for 100% security in online.

first time i see about air gapped and it use to protect date. i was used for more years kaspersky internet security than mcafee i got a lot of advantages to safe my data.
 
i would prepare for a internet security than can use a hardware wallet for safely holding crypto.

we should.not easily.believe anyone who says.that personal wallets.are very safe and not at all easy to be hacked.by anyone, so in.this case.we ourselves.can determine in.various ways.for our future.business, because this is.very related to our future process.in the future, so for something related to security.we must.be aware.of it.because criminals.always have a loophole.for an.account.hacking.process

Sidechannel attacks like those are quite stupid, if you think about it. Most side channel attacks requires direct access to the device, at the point which the user interacts with the hardware wallet. Your EM probe must be directly on the device at the point of interaction or you risk interference from other electronic devices. Those are POC which realistically wouldn't apply in the real world and are no better than a $5 wrench attack.

Besides, most wallets in this day are not vulnerable to timing attack, because that is quite amateurish and most hardware are hardened against it. As compared to a malware attack, the possibility of you gaining any profits is far lower, because your targets are highly specific and involves you breaking into their house in the first place. It is fairly easy to counter most potential side channel attacks.

security in bitcoin is all in ourselves, we should not trust anyone to keep everything we have, no matter how good our friends are, one day he will definitely cheat us, the best security is in ourselves, don't keep it in one wallet , but keep it in several wallets, so we can get extra security..

The moment we have entered cryptocurrency, the hacking vulnerability already been here. You hold your own keys, you saved it and dont exposed it. Thats the safest way you can do about the safety of your coins Even the high tech computer may not be escape from those hackers. Malwares, phishing links and improved and upgraded virus or malware apps are already been spreaded. Its how we protect our own coin by vigilantly visiting and downloading legit and trusted apps.

If that is related to the security in bitcoin, we need to take care of our wallet and do not tell anyone that we do not trust. It is better to keep it for ourselves to know that our wallet is at a safe place. But we also need to remember that there is no 100% safety because the hacker or bad person will always search for what they want. We can only protect with anything we can and always prevent how they can penetrate our wallets. Do not connect the PC to the internet if you install a wallet inside that PC to minimize getting hacked.

Of course we shouldn't, I mean how can they sell their products if they say that it can be bypassed, I think what's needed in this is for us to have a common sense regarding this product, remember that most part in security relies on the people that are doing the safekeeping, now if you are lackadaisical with your security and you are a tattle tale when it comes to the stuff that you are guarding then the security will be pointless since you are the weakest link.

Which is why storing your coins offline in a hardware wallet, airgapped computer, paper wallet, or similar set up, is the best option.

You definitely shouldn't assume that all your data is safe just because you are running some sort of internet security software or anti-virus. This is a recipe for disaster.

Don't trust, verify. If the wallet you are downloading is not open source, avoid it. If it cannot be reproduced from its published source code, avoid it. If you cannot audit the code yourself, then you need to pick a wallet which has been extensively examined by the community. Trust is not good enough. There have been plenty of "trusted" wallets and "trusted" exchanges in the past which have scammed users.

indeed no one can do 100% security in the internet and online world, because security is in ourselves, don't easily believe scammers who pretend to be good, and don't easily believe in giveaways that promise profits, and never give your wallet to anyone, even to your own close friends.

There will always be risk on whatever we are doing specially when it deals with money. Investments in crypto was never mentioned to be completely safe, the security of your wallet or your investment itself relies on your decisions. If you are too careless with the way you choose your wallet or if in fiat settings, banks or any other investment means, you will surely be more prone and vulnerable from experiencing theft. It is indeed true that once bitcoin and other crypto's value rises, there will be more threat to the security of online wallets as well as banks as hackers gets more eager knowing how much worth they may take as they get the chance to steal from you.

To be safe, just reserve your trust on people that you personally know. It should be a mandatory that you should be smart about your safety online, I mean who wants to be a victim or get scammed right?

You only just securing yourself from not getting harm physically from other people but not online. Honestly, they don't give you the security you wanted because even them (your trusted friends), you can't assure that they never bite you back and scam you in the future. It was best and smarter if you just keep your keys secretly, never tell your trusted friends unless if it is needed whene you can't manage to do it anymore.

You need to play safe every time you post something good about your crypto progress, you are prone to be a victim of a hack in many ways. one of the most common is fake emails where many users have fallen victims. Thankfully, today you can easily recover your account if something like that might happened to you in the future as long as you have the necessary information. The other day, I received some emails from Instagram and Mega file share where it said I need to change my password but I don't really use those sites then I thought it's a clear disguise of a scammer to bait me with those common emails. You need to be careful, don't just click whenever you received such emails. double-check and think about it twice.

Of all the wallets in my opinion there are risks and do not guarantee 100% safe. However, you can set it yourself, for example, don't put coins in one place. You need some other safe wallet references. So that when something happens that we don't want, we can minimize losses. But I pray that developers keep upgrading their systems to make it much more secure.

As far as I know and have read, air-gapped computers are about as safe as it gets when it comes to how you store your cryptocurrency funds. Personally I think it is best to spread your coins out across a multitude of wallets.  I of course am excluding wallets such as on an exchange or hot wallets.  For me utilizing a Trezor and paper wallets tends to make me feel most comfortable.

I also have the same thought, no wallets guarantee 100% safe. So we have to anticipate it by being more careful in storing passwords and
private keys. Activate all the security features available in the wallets that we use, and the most important thing is that we don't keep the coins
we have in only one wallet. That would be very risky if it gets stolen or hacked, then we will lose all the coins we have. That's why I keep the coins
I have in 3 wallets for now, by doing this I feel more secure. Because if one of my wallets is hacked, at least I don't lose all the coins I have.

actually nothing is 100% safe in crypto.  but there is a good way of anticipating that is by storing it in a hardware wallet such as a nano ledger.  I think it's safer even though there is still a risk gap

Anything can happen online. Humans created the machines, so there will always be a way to get in.
It's just that it requires some extra ordinary skills to hack into a highly secured system.
It's hard but doable and that is where we must put our efforts into. We must create a highly secured system to store our crypto which can't be easily stolen.

Everything is having a risk but its normal that we would really be sticking out on things which is lesser in terms of risk and this is really through those hardware wallets which we do have known ones like
Trezor and Nano and i dont trust up any HW but only this two.

Next, is that you should be mindful about your seed phrase which is your main priority.Dont share up dont make it aware on other people and that would at least be making yourself
safe specially if you are really go for long term and holding big amounts of coins.

Just be aware and that common sense is needed for you on at least on making yourself to avoid possible hacks or lost of coins.

We don't know that for sure. Maybe Satoshi created thousands of paper wallets on an airgapped machine and imported all the addresses to his mining machine to use for his coinbase transactions.

There is no such thing as the "safest" wallet. It all depends on how you use it. If you run Bitcoin Core on a computer which is riddled with malware, which you regularly use to browse shady sites and download cracked software, then it is absolutely not the safest wallet and you could have your coins stolen in a matter of minutes. Conversely, I could use some horrendous piece of closed source wallet software which is riddled with bugs and vulnerabilities, but use it on a secure, encrypted, airgapped computer, and use it very safely for 11 years.

I disagree. The human is almost always going to be the weakest link in any setup and the reason the coins are stolen, and so it is vital to discuss the human element to using any wallet. I would argue that a properly set up encrypted and airgapped wallet is more secure than a hardware wallet, if both are used properly. The problem is that it is very difficult to use the former properly, while it is very easy to use a hardware wallet properly, and so in the hands of most users a hardware wallet is more secure. A web wallet is probably more secure in my hands than a hardware wallet in the hands of a newbie who types his seed phrase in to any phishing site which asks for it. It is vital to consider the biggest risk - the human - when discussing different wallets.

But not all wallets are equally foolproof. If I give someone who doesn't know what they are doing a brand new hardware wallet, then provided they simply follow the instructions included with it and the advice about not sharing their seed phrase, then it is actually very difficult for them to do something wrong. If I give someone who doesn't know what they are doing a computer and a printer and ask them to create a paper wallet, then it is incredibly easy for them to mess up and lose their coins or generate compromised keys. Does that mean a properly generated paper wallet is less secure than a hardware wallet? No, and I'm sure plenty of people would argue that the opposite is true.

But the techniques of storage are not. Paper wallet private keys are permanently offline, whereas private keys from an internet connect Bitcoin Core are not.

no need to wait for 6 digits at the current price, hackers and online thieves have started doing many ways to steal other people's crypto from spreading viruses to brute forcing or cracking, controll and monitoring someone devices. now it's just how we store our assets in a personal wallet safely. many suggest using a ledger wallet or the simplest is to use a device that is not used for browsing or doing activities on the internet. because the only way hackers get our assets is only with our activity on internet.

If it is a human error, it should be no more than once or may be maximally twice.
However, if it is several times, it will be carelessness.
And about the security and safety of the crypto, well, this is online, everything may be hacked although it has a small chance to do that.
And we cannot trust a platform securely 100% because there may be an error system someday, or hacked by professional hackers, or others.
So, just if we can't get 100% safety, at least we are not careless, try to use or choose the most trusted and promising trust highly, last we have tried.

I really like this conception you have on bitcoin, actually this sounds courageous to new once and also to crypto-novice who is about to establish cryptocurrency investment mentality, bitcoin can't hesitate to reach six digits as you said but is with time factor, and is very encouraging to invest in bitcoin for long time period, some people that invested in bitcoin far back like in 2017 / 2019 is having a lot of benefit now, the same thing is applicable to the price now, if you buy and hold for two years interval probably you make it in time coming.

Since cryptocurrencies started, theives have already found it appealing to target. I think security will be always be questioned since some people tend to use wallets that are convinient to use. I hope people do realize its true value and use them wisely.

As far as I know, there is nothing 100% safe called an online system, especially when it comes to finance and business, especially bitcoin. many hackers are always committing crimes against the cryptocurrency system that is currently developing. one of the best solutions so that bitcoin assets are safe, delete transaction history or access history every time you carry out transaction activities, so that it is not easily hacked by others

I do agree that there is no such thing as 100% security since everything is an online system. It will be harder for business holders to assume every assets are safe. Crimes such as fraud are very much observed nowadays. Finding trusted and safe wallet is a challenge yet its true that crypto is still growing and developers will definitely strive to have the safest wallet to push through the coming years. Will keep in mind the advise tho.

There is nothing completely safe 100% protect when you online. Protected or not depends on yourself. so don't easily trust other people, don't open suspicious sites and don't click randomly. Hackers can't touch you offline so using a hardware wallet is the right choice

In my opinion, nothing is impossible in terms of hacking, because no matter how perfect the system, there must be loopholes and anything made by humans will not be 100% safe.

but we can still minimize and prevent it by storing crypto wallet private keys in a safe place, not using public WIFI to access crypto wallets, and also using complex password combinations using symbols and others and changing them frequently.
and I think everything will be fine if we treat and use it wisely and very carefully, because most people think it is safe because for years they feel safe. actually security is something we should be afraid of and be aware of so that we can keep our assets as good and safe as possible.

Bitcoin owners are already being targeted online by hackers, and it has been happening from time. So, I don’t think there would be any difference from what is happening and what would happen then. It’s still falls down to people being careful with how they store and make use of their cryptocurrency and wallets, because if you’re the type that is always leaving traces online that would make it easy for hackers to access your wallet, then it’s going to be a serious issue for you, as they would have their way with everything you have in your wallet.

People should learn to not give out information about themselves that would make it easy for hackers to access their wallets, such as their email and the rest of them.

yhup correct.. If you're really want to become safe @op from such issue don't trust anyone, and don't ever try to open those messages with links sent from random people around the internet because that's the main reason why people got scam and hack in easy way. Ignore them always and make research as well so that you can obtain more information if its legit or not, indeed all the important information can be found in the internet so i suggest do that way very often especially if you have questions or if want to know a thing about crypto project.. It's a must to be honest and helpful way.

I know that we can’t be 100% right, or maybe leave our lives without having errors in it, but even at that there are still measures that we can follow to avoid issues like this from happening. Ever since I started cryptocurrency investments, I’ve never had issues of my wallet being hacked or maybe an exchange that I’m using been hurt and I lose money or something like that. But, I do see stories of people who experience such things.

Simply because I always follow all these measures to be able to avoid problems that will lead to having my wallets or account hacked. And these are simple things that you can as well do, such as not opening documents or files or emails that you didn’t solicit for, or downloading applications, or packages from websites better unknown, or even clicking links. The next thing is to avoid leaving traces or information that belongs to you online (sensitive information).

As well to trust have limitations currently, even at a point i seem that to build trust is very difficult nowadays, and i know many people are curious to not be victimized from any angle of issues, but the problem is that nobody can escape's problem to hundred percent, which i think you are right from the sentence ( THERE IS NOTHING COMPLETELY SAFE %100) because if you are security conscious of hackers, and if really they wants to trap you they will introduce a methods that is not familiarize with you, so I'm using this as a reference, so the only thing we have to do, is to be careful, simple.

Though the blockchain technology which is backing cryptocurrency is safe, that does not mean that cryptocurrency is completely secure as the cryptocurrency is not backed by any authorities.

in the security system, all have weaknesses. in this case we have to learn from the experience of anyone who has experienced a hack, it is proof that technology has flaws.
I think in terms of security, especially protecting our assets, the role of the owner is the main and we must really take care of our assets properly because hackers always target the owners of cryptocurrency assets at any time.

No, blockchain technology is not safe by itself, what makes it safe and immutable is the way the consensus is achieved and the scale the nodes of the network are distributed. If a cryptocurrency is run by a single organization, it can easily be changed by that organization, and the history written on a blockchain can easily be altered. Therefore, if a cryptocurrency is backed by authorities, those will have complete power over its characteristics and over transactions occurring on the blockchain of this backed cryptocurrency. A system such as that would have been no different from the fiat system we have today. It would have had all the flaws of government-issued money, including continuously expanding supply, inflation, and the enormous power of central banks over the economy and people. It wouldn't be cryptocurrency where security is achieved through unstoppable code and consensus, it would be corruptocurrency where security is broken by default because it is run by corrupted politicians.