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Looks like the database error is back. It's a really useful calculator, though.
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Is the pool down? My miners just failed over to the next pool.
EDIT: Never mind, looks like the connection recovered. Dunno what happened.
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Huh, just read your sig. I suppose that's another option, too.  |
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Do you mean smart card or HSM here ? (I wasn't aware that SafeNet was producing any card, but I might be wrong here).
They make a variety of cards and USB tokens. An HSM is overkill and way too expensive for my use case. Really I'm just looking to generate and store my private keys in a smart card. I'm looking for certifications mostly as a stand-in for satisfying my personal paranoia; I'm not looking to do any commercial development with them at this phase. The main issue you'll see with most (all ?) smart card implementations is that while the hardware has some kind of certification, the software is not fit for Bitcoin specific use case, if you want to fully support the protocol onboard - in the easiest use case (Java Card) you'd need a way to perform a signature over the secp256k1 curve with SHA 256, which is not something provided by the Java Card standard. There are a few proprietaries implementation though - (you can search for ALG_ECDSA_SHA256 on Google) - but I'm not sure they are easy to obtain, and it would most likely lock your implementation to a single provider.
I'm afraid other options to get a certified product are pretty long and costly (again, if you want to fully support the protocol onbard) - you'd work on a certified hardware, implement a certified ECC signature on top of it, then the Bitcoin application (which might change frequently considering the standard is not frozen, another issue for the certification). Before that you need to define your certification profile.
I'd also stay away from a pure Java Card ECC crypto implementation considering it'd be very slow and pretty much vulnerable to side channel attacks as well as more intrusive attacks.
Another approach (the one we chose) can be to design a non certified application on certified hardware, which is IMHO good enough for the time being (i.e. better than everything else using non certified hardware from a security point of view, and ready for certification in case someone is interested enough to jump through all hoops) - in this case, you'll need to pick the hardware platform - pretty much all usual vendors will offer something certified at the hardware level - then buy/design yourself the crypto library (the hardware will only provide you accelerated modular arithmetic operations), then design yourself the Bitcoin application.
This is helpful, thanks. I'm hoping for something with an actual implementation, because I'm comfortable writing a PKCS#11 application, but less so making with implementing actual cryptographic operations - I'm certain to get it wrong somehow. I'm thinking I'll send an inquiry to SafeNet and see whether they support the curves and the specific mechanism I need. Of course, I have no idea how one goes about buying a small quantity of *anything* from these guys. |
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Hi there,
I'm trying to pick a hardware token / smart card that supports the elliptic curve used in Bitcoin (secp256k1). I'm having some trouble finding one - I've seen SafeNet's smart card that claims to have p256, but my understanding is that that named curve is slightly different than the one needed here. I thought I saw a JavaCard software implementation floating around somewhere, but random unvetted crypto implementations make me nervous.
Can anyone recommend a solid smart card or hardware token that has FIPS / CC certification with support for secp256k1?
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The fun thing about Field Programmable Gate Arrays is that they're field programmable - if you're at all so inclined, it's always fun to repurpose them for something new, like brute forcing password hashes.
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I think so many new ASIC miners will be out in the next 6 months that a better investment is to wait and see.
It's always true that you will have more complete information later. You can only get ahead of the other people "waiting to see" by guessing correctly while there's still wide uncertainty. |
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I've been on btct before and I've contemplated on buying into ASICMINER. I'd just like to know if folks' experiences as shareholders has been good, and if they see this company as being around long term.
I've owned shares for a couple of weeks, so not a lot of experience. They pay dividends on time. You can see the dividends/share on the "history" tab here: https://btct.co/security/ASICMINER-PT. The yield isn't bad, and there's indications it's heading up. The company has demonstrated it can actually deploy and ship ASIC-based miners, so that's a huge point in their favor. |
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I want some of those usbminers they got coming out.
About how much you think they will run?
The official ASICMINER thread ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.3880) doesn't seem to have any speculation on that, really. Would love to get my hands on one, but if the recent auction of the large units is any indication (winning bids were BTC76), it's likely not a cost-effective purchase unless you already have a bunch of coins with a low cost-basis. |
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Say I wanted to set away 1BTC for my daughter (when she's born), and then give it to her years later.
What's the best way to store the wallet securely for long periods of time? Was thinking something like encrypted cloud backups + hard copy somewhere, with the encryption secret off in a couple of safety deposit boxes, but all of that's probably overkill for a small balance.
It's difficult to say what 1 BTC will be worth in a few decades. You might not think it's overkill if the exchange rate gets to $100,000 per BTC someday. Hardcopy is probably the safest option. I'd suggest multiple hard copies stored in multiple locations that you know will be secure. Perhaps keep one hard copy with the birth certificate (since you are likely to be able to keep track of that for a few decades), then another copy in a safety deposit box somewhere (if you already have one). As long as you are confident that you'll be able to retrieve the hardcopy, there isn't much need for cloud backups for long term storage. Ah, excellent idea keeping it with the birth certificate. As for a safety deposit box, I don't have one, but probably need one anyway. I'll see what our bank has. |
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Bookmarked, thanks for doing this.
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Say I wanted to set away 1BTC for my daughter (when she's born), and then give it to her years later.
What's the best way to store the wallet securely for long periods of time? Was thinking something like encrypted cloud backups + hard copy somewhere, with the encryption secret off in a couple of safety deposit boxes, but all of that's probably overkill for a small balance.
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Hopefully BFL will get their act together at some point and will actually fulfill all the orders.
I am waiting on confirmations on BFL before I buy anything. I ordered a 5GH a couple weeks ago. i'm hoping they pull thru Hey, what state does your order show? Mine's been in "processing" for a while, and I think that's different from the state where they're still waiting for payment, but I'm not sure. |
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Hopefully BFL will get their act together at some point and will actually fulfill all the orders.
I am waiting on confirmations on BFL before I buy anything. Yeah, I've seen enough to make me think it's not *entirely* vaporware, but they're clearly a company that doesn't have their act together (either have never done hardware manufacturing before, and hence underestimated every step of their supply chain, or deceived customers to get early funding). That said, I bought a single, mostly because I had some bitcoins in my wallet from a couple of years ago that were suddenly worth a lot more. I'm hoping ASICMINER comes through at some point, they seem more on the ball. |
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Howdy,
I'm a relatively new user of bitcoin - bought 10 BTC in mid 2011, and was surprised when their purchasing power was suddenly much higher.
I'm somewhat well read in cryptography, mostly Bruce Schneier's various books (Cryptography Engineer is my most recent read), and I'm a big fan of the concept behind BTC.
I'm still trying to get my head around the economics involved - I guess my current understanding is that the currency is designed to self-regulate with a controlled rate of inflation for some time until all BTC are mined, while miners will compete forever for bigger shares of the current pool of total processing power.
I've put in an order for an ASIC miner, mostly because I find it interesting (I ordered a single from BFL, but from reading around, I shouldn't hold my breath on a delivery date). If it's not economical to mine by the time it shows up, I might try using it for other fun brute-force SHA256 applications (not sure how hard that will be, but hey, why not give it a whirl?).
I'm a somewhat experienced software developer, and distributed systems like this are a lot of fun for me.
-btccontractor
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