HOWTO: create a 100% secure wallet

[Kazimir]

would you trust an online wallet with considerable amount of bitcoins?

Yes, as long as

1) I can backup the private keys myself
2) it works with client side encryption (i.e. my password does not get transmitted to anywhere outside my PC, and without my password, nobody can access my private keys)

[1713584026]

1713584026

[MC10]

Thanks for the tips. I back up my wallet with the .dat file and I encrypted it. I made sure to record the password somewhere safe. I'm using Windows and I found my address after clicking the Receive coins button. There is only one address there, should there be 10 as mentioned in the first post?

[jomplox]

Thank OP for such helpful thread.
For those OS X users out there. I recommend making a new disk image (DMG).
In the creation options simply specify the new image should be encrypted and password protected.
Everything else is a pice of cake.

[stash]

What I implemented so far:

Keep updated wallet on encrypted USB stick & and deleted wallet after used.

Simple.

[zxyzxy]

would you trust an online wallet with considerable amount of bitcoins?

Yes, as long as

1) I can backup the private keys myself
2) it works with client side encryption (i.e. my password does not get transmitted to anywhere outside my PC, and without my password, nobody can access my private keys)

well, the sites are telling you that they dont even store your PW, as long as its true, i dont see any problem with this

[_btcnewbie_]

I also store an encrypted copy of my wallet in a Cloud. So in case you own systems fail in some way, the Cloud hopefully doesn't.

[pangaea]

Wouldn't it be secure enough just to park your coins at a reputable exchange such as Mt Gox?

[Kazimir]

Wouldn't it be secure enough just to park your coins at a reputable exchange such as Mt Gox?

NO of course not!

1. Mt Gox is not reputable at all (they have been hacked before). And having lotsa users or "being big" does NOT AT ALL automatically imply trustworthiness.
2. If they suddenly decide to shut down because they have enough funds and can retire, you're boned.
3. If one of their employees fucks up and causes a database crash or accidentally leaks some passwords or SQL credentials, you're boned.
4. If one of their employees turns out to be corrupt and disappears with your coins, you're boned.
5. When storing coins at Mt Gox, you don't own the private keys, and you have essentially no control over your coins whatsoever.
6. You're making yourself dependent on one random single foreign entity. You'd have to trust them completely, based on hardly anything.

One of the great things about Bitcoin is you don't need to trust anybody. You need to trust mathematical principles.

I store my private keys in an encrypted archive (with a password that I will always easily remember, yet is impossible for anyone to guess or brute force) and I stored this archive on several places online and offline.
It doesn't get much safer than that.

[acin8001]

Thanks for the post, a very good read & solid info. Saved me some time on this task.

[snoodles]

Is it safe to backup my wallet on dropbox?

[zxyzxy]

i would advice to backup the wallet also on usb key/sd card, it is safe, but dont make it necessarily obvious the thing you are uploading is your wallet. on the other hand, wallet without a password is completely useless and if your pw is complicated enough, it would take 1000 years to crack it, so..

[cozz]

postcount++

[cho]

Thanks to the original author for this thread

[suade]

Thank you for this!

[Eskimo]

Thank you for this!

Thanks to the OP

[joshblum87]

I want a secure wallet

[hashkey]

Hello, I got some questions that I would be thankful if someone would shed a light on it for me:

aiwk171 has mentioned on the OP that:

But how can I haz my money back?

Okay, for those of you who didn't guess it yet: Whenever you want to make a transaction from your savings-account to someplace else, get your wallet.dat out of the safe, boot up your liveCD (don't you dare using your regular OS after all this work, or I'll come beat you up personally) and do the reverse: Install bitcoin again, install the encryption-software if necessary and copy your wallet.dat where it belongs.

Here are my questions:

• Does that mean that I have to wait for hours/days for the bitcoin application to be updated before I can check its balance or make some transaction?
• Can I just copy the contents of the bitcoin directory (.lock, blk0001.dat, blk0002.dat, blkindex.dat, db.log, debug.log, peers.dat) to the bitcoin directory of the Ubuntu live cd to make the update procedure faster?

[nr]

The brainwallet concept is very ground braking and cool.

[Kazimir]

Is it safe to backup my wallet on dropbox?

HELL NO! Well unless you encrypted it with a strong password. But Dropbox (i.e. their employees) can access your data. And depending on where they host their data, so can the particular 3rd party hosting / cloud storage company (maybe Amazon or whatever).

Not saying these companies are untrustworthy, but you simply don't want to take this risk. Especially because IF your coins disappear, there's no way to proof it was them.

Wuala.com (an alternative to Dropbox) is safer because encryption occurs client side there.

Then again, you shouldn't have an unencrypted wallet on your PC anyway. Suppose someone breaks in and takes your PC. Or you lose your laptop or whatever. Simply do NOT mess around with your money.

[EVE_ISK]

Best way you be to just memorise if you can