Brain Wallets

[1Money]

Hello folks,

I have read a lot about brain wallets. They sure are intriguing in that you would never have to write anything down that could be discovered by someone else. They are also inherently unsafe in that the passphrase can be brute forced, rainbowed, dictionaried, etc. I did a little expedition, and found a number of brain wallets, by trial and error:

1. The Merkle Root hash of the Genesis Block creates a valid address that has been funded in the past
2. The secret message in the Genesis Block "The Times 03/Jan/2009  ....." also creates a valid and funded address
3. Satoshi's name in many variants, mixed case, lower case, including/excluding blanks leads to many brain wallets
4. "Dread Pirate Roberts" leads to a brain wallet
5. "it was the best of times it was the worst of times" leads to a valid brain wallet
6. bitaddress.org has a vanity address 1NiNja1bUmhSoTXozBRBEtR8LeF9TGbZBN - it will lead to a valid brain wallet address   
7. "to be or not to be" has a valid address.

There is a good piece on why not to use brain wallets http://fc16.ifca.ai/preproceedings/36_Vasek.pdf
however, I can think of ways to improve security and still benefit from the convenience.

1. Create a phrase you are able to remember, for example: "Al Gore invented the Internet and that's an inconvenient truth."
2. Send this through an independent SHA256 generator with a SALT phrase of : "We consume too much NACL."
3. Take the resulting hash as an input for generating your brain wallet address.

Challenge me ;-)

[1715196529]

1715196529

[1715196529]

1715196529

[1715196529]

1715196529

[krishnapramod]

Hello folks,

I have read a lot about brain wallets. They sure are intriguing in that you would never have to write anything down that could be discovered by someone else. They are also inherently unsafe in that the passphrase can be brute forced, rainbowed, dictionaried, etc. I did a little expedition, and found a number of brain wallets, by trial and error:

1. The Merkle Root hash of the Genesis Block creates a valid address that has been funded in the past
2. The secret message in the Genesis Block "The Times 03/Jan/2009  ....." also creates a valid and funded address
3. Satoshi's name in many variants, mixed case, lower case, including/excluding blanks leads to many brain wallets
4. "Dread Pirate Roberts" leads to a brain wallet
5. "it was the best of times it was the worst of times" leads to a valid brain wallet
6. bitaddress.org has a vanity address 1NiNja1bUmhSoTXozBRBEtR8LeF9TGbZBN - it will lead to a valid brain wallet address   
7. "to be or not to be" has a valid address.

There is a good piece on why not to use brain wallets http://fc16.ifca.ai/preproceedings/36_Vasek.pdf
however, I can think of ways to improve security and still benefit from the convenience.

1. Create a phrase you are able to remember, for example: "Al Gore invented the Internet and that's an inconvenient truth."
2. Send this through an independent SHA256 generator with a SALT phrase of : "We consume too much NACL."
3. Take the resulting hash as an input for generating your brain wallet address.

Challenge me ;-)

And what purpose does it serves? An additional layer of security/safety? A strong password is a strong password, why load the brain with remembering public and private keys. I have a word document dedicated to copy paste all the different passwords in different sites. I have to be a memory man to get through all these without the doc.

If you are using a weak password you would get hacked one way or the other, if you are using a strong password you are immune to hackers, it's as simple as that.

The only problem you then face is law enforcement or criminals compelling you to give up your passphrase. In this case, you might be able to get away with creating a dummy pass phrase to an address that you already have some bitcoins on. However, due to the block chain, whoever is forcing you to divulge your pass phrase may know you are lying.

http://www.coindesk.com/how-to-create-a-brain-wallet/

Bitcoins in one's own mind by memorizing a mnemonic recovery seed. If the mnemonic is not recorded anywhere, the Bitcoins can be thought of as being held only in the mind of the owner. If a brainwallet is forgotten or the person dies or is permanently incapacitated, the Bitcoins are lost forever.

Practically everyone who knows about or cares loudly yells at people DO NOT USE BRAINWALLETS [GENERATED BY HUMANS]. We've seen pretty concrete evidence that users are resistant to good advice in this space, and they are shocked when their favorite quotation is cracked and they lose their coins (But it was 60 characters long! I even added a special character! how is this possible?!), the existing sites promoting this stuff won't use a KDF stronger than SHA256*1 because "users are stupid if they use weak passwords".

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Brainwallet

Why go through all this mind wallet hassle if you have a strong password.

[1Money]

And what purpose does it serves? An additional layer of security/safety? A strong password is a strong password, why load the brain with remembering public and private keys. I have a word document dedicated to copy paste all the different passwords in different sites. I have to be a memory man to get through all these without the doc.
If you are using a weak password you would get hacked one way or the other, if you are using a strong password you are immune to hackers, it's as simple as that.

By strong password, I assume you are referring to BIP038? I agree, if you want a paper wallet that has an additional layer of protection in case it falls into the wrong hands, that's a good way to go.

Brain wallets are only useful if you do not want to print or store anything other than your public address. In the example I gave, you do not have to remember anything but your phrase (you can have a modified one for each public address), and a strong password which you can employ as a SALT for hashing your phrase.

Your word document with different passwords must never fall into wrong hands, e.g. someone who hacks your computer.

In my case, they would have to pick my brain ;-)

 

[BTCLovingDude]

this has been discussed a thousand times (you probably can find the topics on bitcointalk if you search). the problem with a brain wallet is the fact that humans are incapable of coming up with a properly random phrase for their "password".

you may say "I" can and "I" have made one that nobody could hack so far. and you know what, you may probably even be right. but we are not talking about one exception case. in general people are better off with normal way of letting the wallet generate them a properly random private key.
statistically speaking that is the best option.

not to mention that a cold storage is sometimes never used for a very long time. (lets say 5 years) in which case you can easily forget your complex password without any backups since it is brain wallet and there must not be any backups.

[vapourminer]

you could probably come up with something that may not be memorizable (so technically maybe not a brain wallet per say as you would need reference material if your memory is not perfect) but is easily reconstructed.

take you favorite author, and take sentences from each book on some order you can remember. 1st sentence in chapter one in 1st book, 2nd sentence in 2nd chapter of 2nd book, etc. maybe use chapter/sentences based on some set of number you value, math functions, dates, home addys, phone #s. perhaps reverse every other word/sentence, skip every 3rd word, whatever. can be elaborate as you like as long as you can remember the format, or write it down in a format only you can figure out as in hints.

point being you would not have to write anything down that is the actual phrase, but you would need access to the books to reconstruct it.

[PELELE]

 i know about brain wallet.Brainwallet.io is a deterministic bitcoin address generator. Store bitcoin in your brain by remembering your passphrase and salts. Address generation takes place in your browser, and no information is ever sent to our server.Use a long, unique password that is never used in any song, literature, or media. If you use a weak password, you are at risk of having your bitcoin stolen. We recommend a minimum of 8 random words. Click the "random" button to have a secure 12-word passphrase generated for you. If you forget your passphrase, your bitcoin will be lost forever. Please keep in mind that your passphrase and salts are case sensitive.