First up... please stop double posting... if you realise there is more to add to your post a minute or two later... click the "Edit" button and simply add the new comments to the current post. There is no need to create an entirely new post.
Okay so if want to encrypt my electrum similar to like how i did it with my electrum litecoin... does that password have to be the same as the one i send my btc? Or is it suppose to be different?
You have ONE password per Electrum wallet. You can't choose to have one to open and one to send. The same password does both.
if im planning to send btc a lot from wallet to bittrex, then i could still use cold storage? Well what if someone has access to your hardware wallet then?
Then the only 3 attempts at the 4-8 digit PIN before the device resets itself should stop them... and if they somehow guess that correctly, then the nice strong passphrase with at least 10 characters of lowercase, uppercase, numbers and symbols that you use should stop them getting into your wallet.
So basically if you keep btc in your electrum even if its encrypted to not show btc balance... they can just download a keylogger on it and thats all?
They would also need a copy of your wallet file... but it's not too far fetched to think that if they have access to your machine, then they probably have access to your wallet file.
What could be done to prevent this? So if you install a program like bitlocker to secure your computer such as you need to put a password on it in order to use your computer, would that prevent it or not? I want to know what is needed to be done on my computer where if someone had access to my computer, they cannot view my electrum or anything else on my computer. Because i believe putting just a password for windows 10 is not enough?
If the wallet file itself is encrypted, they'd need the password to get into it... if they have a keylogger and can get your wallet password as well as your wallet... then your coins are gone.
If you use a hardware wallet, if they got your wallet file it wouldn't matter, your coins will be safe, because the wallet file won't contain any private keys... even if they have your password. They would need to physically have your hardware wallet as well. If you notice your hardware wallet is lost, you simply move your coins ASAP.
If you put bitlocker on, the entire drive would be encrypted and they'd need the password for that before the computer would even start up... it's possible they could use a USB hardware keylogger to capture directly from your keyboard, but that's easy to notice a little box between the keyboard and computer (or you can super glue your keyboard into the USB port so no one can unplug it to install the hardware keylogger
) But in theory, anyone with physical access won't even be able to read the drive contents as it would be stored encrypted.
Also, at some point, you're just going to have to accept that NO SYSTEM is 100% hack or disaster proof. There will ALWAYS be some way to compromise or break a system...
Paper wallets - can be lost or stolen or damaged by fire/flood etc
Brain wallet - not random enough and guessed by people bruteforcing, head injury causes memory loss
Hardware wallet - disassembly and reading of chip using forensic techniques, loss of password (same as brain wallet), loss of seed written on paper (same as paper wallet)
Software wallet - loss of wallet file (hacking, hardware failure), loss of password (same as brain wallet), loss of seed written on paper (same as paper wallet)
Offline Air-Gapped PC - loading of malware by someone with physical access... loss of wallet file (same as software wallet), loss of password (same as brain wallet), loss of seed written on paper (same as paper wallet)
Encrypted drive - loss of data (brute forcing of encryption, hardware failure), loss of password (same as brain wallet)
