HOWTO: create a 100% secure wallet

[aiwk171]

Note: This is a repost of the HOWTO I made in the newbie-forum. If any mod objects to double-posting, or is incredibly pissed at me right now, feel free to delete the thread of your choosing.

Also, there is an excellent article on the Wiki which should give you some ideas about the problem of security. This is meant as a more specific and simple straight-forward guide, i.e I won't spell out where you can find your wallet.dat and so on.

Why?

So, in light of the recent Drama and my general feeling that some people are unsure about the security of their wallet (or their PC in general), I've decided to give you an idea how to create a secure savings account for you to deposit your hard-earned coins in.

Clarifications

So, you crazy twat want to invest all your savings in bitcoin, but you're not yet shit-for-brains enough to forget the security aspect of the whole thing? Here's the HowTo for you.

So, the first misconception to clear out, is the concept of the "wallet". The wording in itself is not ideal, since it is more like a key. Cryptographically speaking, it is actually exactly that: your private key.

Now this has the following implication: If someone steals your wallet.dat now, and you deposit coins in it later, the thief will be able to spend/transfer ALL your coins, including those you added _after_ the wallet was stolen! I'm sure a lot of you know this already, I just want to clarify this for everybody.

So, clearly, you have to make it impossible for anybody to _ever_ steal your wallet. Clearly, this is infeasible for your day-to-day transactions account, since encryption will be useless as soon as you want to access your coins (Since the decrypted wallet.dat has to be stored in RAM at some point. There are ways, but for now, consider them a little tedious).

So the solution is the following: you have your spendings-account where you keep only low amounts of coin (much like a real-life wallet), and you have your super-secure savings wallet, which you only access on rare occasions.

How?

I'll try to keep it short: You have to create your savings account under ideal security-conditions. I won't rant about you cunts people using Windows in general, but note that Linux is in no way automagically completely secure. Everything depends a lot on your behaviour.

1. What you'll do is the following: Create a live-CD or a bootable USB with your OS of choice on it. I suggest using the Ubuntu LiveCD.

The reason is simple. When you create your new wallet, you want to make abolutely sure, that your running operating system doesn't in any way log your keys or secretly save your files somewhere.

2. Boot your freshly-created OS, and install the Bitcoin client on it. Yes you can install software inside a liveCD environment. Optionally, also install some encryption software, but we'll leave that for now.

3. Your Bitcoin client will immediately generate 10 addresses for you, and with them, the corresponding wallet.dat.

4. Save your addresses somewhere, if you have to, write them down manually (if you do this, then I bow to your zeal and declare you crazy). I suggest you send them to yourself over email.

5. This is the important step. Copy your wallet.dat somewhere. Burn then on a CD or another medium. I for instance love those little 64MB SD-cards you sometimes get with a new camera. They rock. You might want to make multiple copies (on multiple cards/CDs, not multiple copies of the same file on the same disk you tart).

6. Now, eject whatever you just copied on, and guard it like your life depends on it. Not really, but here is the important step: If you encrypted your wallet.dat with an encryption algorithm you feel safe about, just keep it around your house.

7. Shut down. There will be no trace of your walled.dat on your harddisk, since it never actually resided there.

Important: You will want to keep another copy somewhere else, in a safe physical location, or at least one that is safe while your house burns down. You might already know it, but losing your wallet.dat is worse than someone stealing it. It'll be gone forever.

If you didn't encrypt the file (which I prefer), put the SDcards, CDs, whatever in a safe. That's right: a real-world safe, like banks have, who also happen to lock their doors and are in general very anal about their security and all that jazz. You can rent small safety-deposit boxes in exchange for money. As a bonus, it'll be fire-proof as well.

8. In case it's not yet obvious: You will now only make day-to-day transactions like you used to do it, on your computer (are you _still_ using windows?) and every now and then, you will put some coins into your savings-account. Using the addresses from step 4). How much you want to keep in your wallet is up to you.

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.

Congratulations: you can now access your 25'000 bitcoins and nobody will have messed with them while you were asleep.

Possible attacks

So now, the _only_ way for someone to steal your coin, will be to steal your physical copy of the wallet. That's why you might want to encrypt it, although if you do, don't forget the passphrase. Also, if you die, your family can still get your bank-safe opened, but they won't be able to pick through your brain and get the passphrase out of it. That's why I prefer to not encrypt it.

There is one more possibility: a physical keylogger: It will be able to intercept the password you use to encrypt your wallet.dat, which, if you keep a copy at home, can then be stolen and used. Another reason, why a regular safe is the best option in my humble opinion.

What else?

EDIT: A little protip for those who don't know: You can of course use blockexplorer.com to keep track of your account while it's safely hidden away. Doing this will simply allow you to see how many coins are associated with a given address.

I suggest you also create new day-to-day wallets (even having a few coins stolen can be frustrating), as your current ones might already have been stolen. Of course, this requires a secure OS, so you better ditch that infected piece of shit fine gear of yours. DON'T just create new wallets on the system you're using right now, since it won't solve anything in case you're already infected.

In addition, it doesn't hurt to read up on some technical details. Use the Wiki. Learn the difference between the amount in your wallet, and the amount on the different block-addresses. If you handle a lot of money, ACT ACCORDINGLY. Don't get all crazy-enthusiastic-venture-capitalist and invest all your savings in bitcoin. Also, don't speculate too much on the price development, you'll make more money if you use that time to work at a regular job.

Now, if you happen to make/have made a significant amount of coins, don't run around telling everybody like the self-satisfied vagina that you are. You wouldn't do that with real money either. At least I hope so.

Also, someone will probably make a bitcoin-specific liveCD, which should save some hassle in the steps above.
Also, take it easy and be a cool guy woh doesn't afraid of anything.
Also, pick up a book every now and then.


Yes, there are other ways to do this, and yes, some might be more practical and maybe just as secure. Write a comment about it.

If anyone has any clarifications, questions, suggestions, or wants to call me a moron, please feel free to do so, and I'll see if there is anything to be improved about it. Also, spelling mistaeks.

Also, in case anybody got all excited by this guide and/or seen the light of Jesus-Christ the saviour AND wants to thank me with coins (why on earth would you do that?), here's my address: 16VD78R8nxqJGesE7E9KS6A8TikQQpKNm5

Have fun.

EDIT: Corrections and added a few insults just for you, dear anonymous reader.

[Brainslug]

+1 Me likey.

Guess as soon as I start to trade with larger amounts of BTC I'll use that technique. Thanks for that guide.

[aiwk171]

mods: is it possible, to somehow ShamWow merge these two topics, or at least redirect the replies to just one of the two?

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=17240.msg222430
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=17240.0

If not, then I'm sorry I made such a mess on your carpet.

[aiwk171]

Thanks for that guide.

You're welcome. And remember: nothing prevents you from doing the whole procedure now and just transferring a few coins every now and then. You'll get the extra satisfaction of having something like a piggy bank

[Brainslug]

Yeah, I think I'm slowly beginning to think in the context on how to keep my BTC safe (I hope that made any sense, english isn't my first language )

I was thinking of using my old netbook I don't use at all (because it was too slow for my purposes), install Ubuntu on it and create my savings wallet there. Now I thought of something (I'm probably not the first) so I'd appreciate it if you (or anybody else) may give me some feedback on that thought:

I make a completely clean installation of Ubuntu on that netbook. I only once let it connect to the internet to install all current needed updates and the Bitcoin Client. As soon as that's finished I completely disconnect it from the internet and generate a few addresses which I write down on my PC on which I use my every-day-wallet. I either use that every-day-wallet or the addresses of the savings-wallet directly to store my "savings-BTC".
Now if in some point in time I want to withdraw something from my savings-wallet, I first transfer everything from my every-day-wallet to the savings-wallet. Then I turn on the netbook, take a completely clean USB-stick (or any other medium), move the savings-wallet on that medium and repeat the first step (create a new wallet on the netbook and write down the addresses). Then copy the old savings-wallet on my PC and transfer the remainder of the BTC (if I only want to withdraw a certain amount) to the new savings wallet.

Although... now that I read it, it doesn't seem as safe as I first thought it was >.>

[bcearl]

First security advice I read here that doesn't look like total bullshit.


Thank you for your work!





Ultimately you could do security in three stages then:

1. Regular user account has a wallet with small amounts only.
2. For larger but not huge amounts you could follow my advice for a second user account.
3. For huge amounts your proposal is the only way in my opinion.

[aiwk171]

Brainslug: Seems to kinda-work, but always be careful with overly complicated schemes: the possibilities for making an error are simply much bigger. Also, it seems a little tedious. Plus there is the physical security of your notebook. If you don't encrypt the partition, it will be open to anyone getting his hands on your machine.

Thank you for your work!

I aim to please. Happy that you like it.

[Brainslug]

Yeah, that the netbook will be encrypted is already in my thought-process (that's why I didn't write it explicitly ). And I think one could write a simple script that 1) wipes the USB medium completely
2) copies the old savings-wallet to the medium
3) runs the Bitcoin client and (if that's even possible) automatically generates a few addresses and saves them in a textfile on the USB medium

Though I think the last step is not possible afaik, but it also isn't necessarily needed.

[bcearl]

Brainslug: Seems to kinda-work, but always be careful with overly complicated schemes: the possibilities for making an error are simply much bigger. Also, it seems a little tedious. Plus there is the physical security of your notebook. If you don't encrypt the partition, it will be open to anyone getting his hands on your machine.

Thank you for your work!

I aim to please. Happy that you like it.

We already asked for a security subforum, maybe you join the request.

https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=16273.0



If you have time and want to, you could also review my specific multi-user Ubuntu setup. Of course it is a trade of between perfect security and usability. A seperate system as you propose is absolutely necessary for huge amounts of coins.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15068.0

[aiwk171]

We already asked for a security subforum, maybe you join the request.

https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=16273.0

If you have time and want to, you could also review my specific multi-user Ubuntu setup. Of course it is a trade of between perfect security and usability. A seperate system as you propose is absolutely necessary for huge amounts of coins.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15068.0

I'll have a look at both, promised. I have to run now though, I'll be back later.

[aiwk171]

bcearl: Your setup seems quite the sensible thing to do. It's actually the method recommended by the wiki, and right now I can't think of any reason why this shouldn't be very secure. Especially if you never run any programs when logged in as the secure user.

However, the problem of keylogging (physically) still exists, as your password is the point of entry for any attacker. Other than that, you'll be completely fine.

Edit: Actually, the weak point is the login password, just wanted to clarify that (If I'm correct in assuming that your home directory is decrypted as soon as you log in. At least in RAM.). Also, scusi for the double post.

[kokojie]

Your setup seems quite the sensible thing to do. It's actually the method recommended by the wiki, and right now I can't think of any reason why this shouldn't be very secure. Especially if you never run any programs when logged in as the secure user.

However, the problem of keylogging (physically) still exists, as your password is the point of entry for any attacker. Other than that, you'll be completely fine.

How does a keylogger get installed on a live cd?

[aiwk171]

How does a keylogger get installed on a live cd?

See my link in the guide. Not only are there physical keyloggers which you usually put between the keyboard an the USB-port, but there are ways to remotely monitor what you're typing.

[bcearl]

bcearl: Your setup seems quite the sensible thing to do. It's actually the method recommended by the wiki, and right now I can't think of any reason why this shouldn't be very secure. Especially if you never run any programs when logged in as the secure user.

However, the problem of keylogging (physically) still exists, as your password is the point of entry for any attacker. Other than that, you'll be completely fine.

Edit: Actually, the weak point is the login password, just wanted to clarify that (If I'm correct in assuming that your home directory is decrypted as soon as you log in. At least in RAM.). Also, scusi for the double post.

Yes, that's why I have a 12-character password with really independent characters of all categories, which I meantioned in the Howto.

Idea for your setup: It looks reasonable for me to disable unnecessary dangers in the system, like automatic mount and preview of files.

[Brainslug]

If you're looking for really strong passwords I can always recommend a YubiKey http://www.yubico.com/yubikey
Using a "normal strong" password (something you can actually remember) in combination with the 16-64 character long static password on the YubiKey provides pretty good safety. Though you then have to watch out for your YubiKey of course

[Sandoz]

How does a keylogger get installed on a live cd?

See my link in the guide. Not only are there physical keyloggers which you usually put between the keyboard an the USB-port, but there are ways to remotely monitor what you're typing.

Use an on-screen keyboard to get around hardware keyloggers. Cumbersome but quite safe...

[jerfelix]

@aiwk171-

Excellent guide, and I especially appreciate the crossed out words.

The only thing I did differently was:
1.  Download LinuxCoin, which is a "Live CD" that includes Bitcoin
2.  Install LinuxCoin while you are disconnected from the internet.  This way there's no chance someone will hack you during the minutes it takes to complete this procedure.
3.  Fire up your PC running LinuxCoin, start up Bitcoin, and create your wallet file.
4.  EXIT Bitcoin
5.  Dump your wallet file to multiple mediums, including CD, USB key, and maybe even paper.

My wallet.dat file was 16K, so a lot of hex to re-key in later (in an emergency situation), but really you only need less than 1K of the file: your public and private keys to enable the one Bitcoin Address to work. 1K of hex isn't impossible to type in.  I may write a quick python script to pull out the critical few bits from wallet.dat, as an emergency+emergency backup.  Of course, a QR code would be nice, but too much work for the emergency+emergency backup!

The only reason I really like paper is because I am thinking 50 years down the road, when someone pulls out my safe-deposit box.  I'm afraid electronic media might be in jeopardy.

Don't forget to include instructions for your next-of-kin.  It's possible that they will find the disks, and not realize the potential value stored on them (especially if it's in the next year or two, before digital currency really is wide-spread).

---

And, for everyone who is too lazy or not technical enough to do all this, the alternative is to find a Linux geek who you REALLY Trust to execute these steps for you.

If you ARE the Linux geek who can follow these instructions, I encourage you to offer your service to others.  Once you fire up your Live CD, create a few of these "vaults" for your non-technical friends.

---

Also, note that if you make regular deposits to this account, you can check the status of them at any time on Blockexplorer.com, and see that your deposit was made.  You can also sort of verify the balance at any time, and make sure no one is stealing your Savings account. 

[aral]

You could always just get a crappy cheap little netbook to put your safe wallet on and keep that in the safe.  Saves a lot of faffing with CDs.

[Drifter]

You could always just get a crappy cheap little netbook to put your safe wallet on and keep that in the safe.  Saves a lot of faffing with CDs.

You're still going to have to connect to the internet if you ever want to spend the coins.

[aiwk171]

+1 for you jerfelix

aral: So you're saying burning CDs is too tedious, better buy a netbook and use that as medium? And do you specifically require a crappy one?  

[aral]

aral: So you're saying burning CDs is too tedious, better buy a netbook and use that as medium? And do you specifically require a crappy one?  

Why are you taking the piss?  I have just made your idea way more convenient.   

Instead of booting up off a liveCD (which IS slow) then installing bitcoin and waiting for the download, you can just fire up the netbook. 

You can make a script that burns an encrypted wallet copy as well, do whatever you want, it's waiting there for next time you need it.

When you've finished the transaction you just stow the netbook in the safe again.  If I had 25k BTC I would probably do this.  I think it makes a whole lot of sense.

[aiwk171]

aral: So you're saying burning CDs is too tedious, better buy a netbook and use that as medium? And do you specifically require a crappy one?  

Why are you taking the piss?  I have just made your idea way more convenient.   

Instead of booting up off a liveCD (which IS slow) then installing bitcoin and waiting for the download, you can just fire up the netbook. 

You can make a script that burns an encrypted wallet copy as well, do whatever you want, it's waiting there for next time you need it.

When you've finished the transaction you just stow the netbook in the safe again.  If I had 25k BTC I would probably do this.  I think it makes a whole lot of sense.

Don't sweat, I like taking the piss. Just yanking your chain...

My initial point was, that you don't need to access your wallet.dat in order to transfer funds to it, so as long as you're in piggybank-mode, a tiny SDcard in a safe seems the least error-prone way.

But you're right of course. If you can store a netbook safely somewhere and trust its hardware will remain intact it'll work. Just never, ever install any programs in userspace. And of course, see that you never use sudo for anything you're not 100% sure about. So thanks for your contribution (Ugh, that's me being nice, I hate myself already).

[Rggoalie3]

I see references to printing out your wallet.dat all over the place and I really like that idea. But, when I open up my wallet.dat file in word pad it is 200+ pages long. Am I missing something here?

[jerfelix]

I see references to printing out your wallet.dat all over the place and I really like that idea. But, when I open up my wallet.dat file in word pad it is 200+ pages long. Am I missing something here?

Sorry, yes, I have mentioned a few times that a printed copy of wallet.dat would be attractive to me.  But let me explain:

First, the valuable part of wallet.dat is the key pairs. 
Second, Bitcoin creates 100 Bitcoin Addresses to start with, and each time you perform a transaction, your wallet gets a little bigger.  You'll create more keypairs, and therefore more size.

What I was trying to say is that you can create a virgin wallet, and print the important parts of THAT.  Specifically, the key pairs necessary to reactivate ONE bitcoin Address (not 100).

That set of information is relatively small - I believe significantly less than 1000 characters.  It could easily be printed and stored on one page.  Even a virgin wallet file with the 100 key pairs is only about 16K.

My logic with this was to create a "vault" for your long term storage.  It would be used for deposit only, until someday when you want to retrieve it all.  The paper would be a fail-safe, if all media failed (imagine you store your wallet.dat file in a safe deposit box, and the renter next to you stores a large magnet!)   Paper has some advantages.

The next question is, though, what do you do with this paper in the event you need to recover.  I believe it would be relatively trivial to write a program to recreate a valid wallet file given the piece of paper, but I haven't proven that yet.  I also believe that if I had 100K tied up in my ability to perform that task, I'd get it done!  (especially since the Bitcoin software is open source, and the file format is documented.)

Here's all the stuff that's in a "loaded" wallet.dat file.  That's why I think you want a "virgin" file (and you really only need 1 address's keypairs):

    your keypairs for each addresses
    transactions done from/to your addresses
    user preferences
    default key
    reserve keys
    accounts
    a version number
    Key pool

See why it gets huge?

[Rggoalie3]

I see references to printing out your wallet.dat all over the place and I really like that idea. But, when I open up my wallet.dat file in word pad it is 200+ pages long. Am I missing something here?

...
See why it gets huge?

Yes, that does make sense. But it doesn't help me very much. How does one parse out a particular public/private key for printing? Then, once done, how does one take that private key and make it functional inside of a bitcoin client again? I see this recommendation all over the forums, but I have never seen a tutorial on how it is done. Any help you could give would be great!!!

[jerfelix]

Yes, that does make sense. But it doesn't help me very much. How does one parse out a particular public/private key for printing? Then, once done, how does one take that private key and make it functional inside of a bitcoin client again? I see this recommendation all over the forums, but I have never seen a tutorial on how it is done. Any help you could give would be great!!!

Someone (maybe me) will write a utility (or two) to do just that.
I was going to start with bitcointools: https://github.com/gavinandresen/bitcointools

With those tools, you can manipulate the wallet pretty freely.

[J180]

You could always just get a crappy cheap little netbook to put your safe wallet on and keep that in the safe.  Saves a lot of faffing with CDs.

You're still going to have to connect to the internet if you ever want to spend the coins.

Perhaps there will be a future market for a bitcoin laptop. An OS which uses completly read-only memory, so it can't get malware, and perhaps a design which makes it very difficult to tamper with. Then people could just put one of those little devices into their safe.

[imperi]

I have a question, if someone happens to know, and sorry if this was already asked.

Can someone sniff both your public and private key off the network? Can someone explain technically if this is possible?

What I mean is, even if your computer has NO malware on it, is it possible for someone to intercept the keys and then use them?

[lemonginger]

You could always just get a crappy cheap little netbook to put your safe wallet on and keep that in the safe.  Saves a lot of faffing with CDs.

You're still going to have to connect to the internet if you ever want to spend the coins.

Perhaps there will be a future market for a bitcoin laptop. An OS which uses completly read-only memory, so it can't get malware, and perhaps a design which makes it very difficult to tamper with. Then people could just put one of those little devices into their safe.

I think that possibly before that there will be a market for insured virtual bitcoin safes where companies are under legal binding agreement to keep your bitcoins safe, like, you know,  a bank

[aiwk171]

I have a question, if someone happens to know, and sorry if this was already asked.

Can someone sniff both your public and private key off the network? Can someone explain technically if this is possible?

What I mean is, even if your computer has NO malware on it, is it possible for someone to intercept the keys and then use them?

No. Interception is impossible, simply because the whole concept of a private key implies that it will _never_ have to leave your PC. It's just used to generate a signature if you will, which then "proves" to the network that you are allowed to make a transaction from address X.

[imperi]

I have a question, if someone happens to know, and sorry if this was already asked.

Can someone sniff both your public and private key off the network? Can someone explain technically if this is possible?

What I mean is, even if your computer has NO malware on it, is it possible for someone to intercept the keys and then use them?

No. Interception is impossible, simply because the whole concept of a private key implies that it will _never_ have to leave your PC. It's just used to generate a signature if you will, which then "proves" to the network that you are allowed to make a transaction from address X.

Ohh I see. That makes perfect sense. Thanks!

[bcearl]

If you're looking for really strong passwords I can always recommend a YubiKey http://www.yubico.com/yubikey
Using a "normal strong" password (something you can actually remember) in combination with the 16-64 character long static password on the YubiKey provides pretty good safety. Though you then have to watch out for your YubiKey of course

I use a lot public key crypto every day, for example to log in at university machines.

But for wallets it all comes back to a password anyway, because I want to be confident that I could access some backup at any time. So some of my wallet backups will be encrypted with AES and passphrase anyway.

[bcearl]

You could always just get a crappy cheap little netbook to put your safe wallet on and keep that in the safe.  Saves a lot of faffing with CDs.

You're still going to have to connect to the internet if you ever want to spend the coins.

You actually don't. It's just that the current official client does not support any other method.

But in theory the client could make the transaction offline by writing it to a transaction file. You could then transport that file to an online computer and send it to the network from there.

There is no need to have a private key leave the offline computer. That's not a new concept, any smartcard does the same. They never release public keys, they release the signed data only.

[aiwk171]

But in theory the client could make the transaction offline by writing it to a transaction file. You could then transport that file to an online computer and send it to the network from there.

Ooh, that would be tits!

[bcearl]

But in theory the client could make the transaction offline by writing it to a transaction file. You could then transport that file to an online computer and send it to the network from there.

Ooh, that would be tits!

I think the devs thought about all of that. Including encrypting the wallet by default, so that backups require only copying the wallet.dat.

It is more of an accident that bitcoin got so much media attention in version 0.3.2x - the number should explain everything.

[aiwk171]

It is more of an accident that bitcoin got so much media attention in version 0.3.2x - the number should explain everything.

Well, to be fair, that's actually the traditional way opensource programs usually do their numbering: total understatement. If it was a commercial program, you bet they would be at least at version 3 right now.

[wujh]

It's still early age for the BTC.

But if we all have to do this tricky stuff, the bitcoin will never thrive as a currency.

You geeky guys should give some solutions for the people not very familiar with these kind of complicated tech skill. Maybe backup\encrypt\import\export\ the wallet.dat function should be put into the future client software.

[bcearl]

It is more of an accident that bitcoin got so much media attention in version 0.3.2x - the number should explain everything.

Well, to be fair, that's actually the traditional way opensource programs usually do their numbering: total understatement. If it was a commercial program, you bet they would be at least at version 3 right now.

Yes, but people don't manage millions of dollars with most of the software they use.

[aiwk171]

It's still early age for the BTC.

But if we all have to do this tricky stuff, the bitcoin will never thrive as a currency.

You geeky guys should give some solutions for the people not very familiar with these kind of complicated tech skill. Maybe backup\encrypt\import\export\ the wallet.dat function should be put into the future client software.

Bah, first of all, it's not that hard, second of all, you don't _have_ to do it, thirdly, it's only relevant if you handle larger sums. I hope you don't find putting your real money in a bank too geeky and/or hard.

I'll say it as often as I have to: Your suggestion would just lead to a false sense of security, and will be useless if the user doesn't know what he's doing. I'm sorry, but that's the reality of it: If you do dumb stuff, behave irresponsibly with large sums, no IT security in the WORLD will save you from the threat of being robbed.

So you, as a person who likes it the convenient way, you still have two options: 1. Use Linux. Jesus, at least for bitcoin. And the still, don't click on everything you find on the internet, watch your porn on another account and, ideally, ditch that fuckwad called adobe-flashplayer.
2. Do it as people do with banks: entrust a professional with your money. I'm sure as bitcoin will establish itself, services like that will pop up. Still: if you write down your password to that service somewhere, you're hopeless. And even if you behave like the smart person you are, there may still be risk involved as long as you don't understand the technical side of it. It's not that hard, really.

Read the guide in the wiki, it basically recommends setting up a safe account for bitcoin. It's secure enough while still being convenient to use _and_ easy to set up.

[aiwk171]

In case anyone here is interested in an all-in-one solution (this request came up frequently in the newbie discussion), I created a poll to see if there is any interest in having something like a simple, grandma-friendly tutorial and a prepackaged operating system, which would come in the form of a bitcoin-only USB-stick that allows safe transfers without the need of any technical affinity.

Head over there if you want to express your opinion about this: Poll for an easy security HOWTO (+ operating system)

[Jokah]

Surely if bitcoin is to succeed then this process has to be made simpler at some point.

I'm certainly not complaing at the OP as it is a well written guide on how to secure your wallet at this current time. But when compared to how easy it is for the average person to safely store cash or gold for example securing your bitcoins safely is a process that very few people will be able to do. I would say most people wouldn't know how to do a simple task like change there screen resolution on a computer let alone carry out a process like this.

I have a hard enough time explaining bitcoin to people as it is. If I carried on to explain what needs to be done to keep your bitcoins safe they'd proabaly be put off bitcoins before I finished one sentence.

[cypherdoc]

In case anyone here is interested in an all-in-one solution (this request came up frequently in the newbie discussion), I created a poll to see if there is any interest in having something like a simple, grandma-friendly tutorial and a prepackaged operating system, which would come in the form of a bitcoin-only USB-stick that allows safe transfers without the need of any technical affinity.

Head over there if you want to express your opinion about this: Poll for an easy security HOWTO (+ operating system)

i need clarification.  while in Ubuntu live cd, should we download the entire block chain in the client and then send btc from another wallet to the receiving address, and then wait for confirmation before closing the client and then copying wallet.dat to a usb stick?

or do u advocate just closing the client after obtaining the receiving address and then copying it to a usb stick before getting confirmation of the transfer of btc to the new receiving address?

the former would just give more confidence that what ur doing is gonna work over the long term since you won't be able to view any balances from here on forward w/o compromising security.