[100 dots] seed phrase backup

[LoyceV]

To avoid ever so slightly but of course noticably rising planks when you have a sequence of consecutive 1s you could waste planks and always use two planks for one bit. A binary 1 is: shorter plank followed by longer plank; a binary 0 is: longer plank followed by shorter plank. That avoids unpleasant rising or falling staircase sequences. Who said it needs to be efficient encoding?

Instead of wasting planks (and needing a bigger garden), you could simply use 2 different planks: 201 cm long means 1, 199 cm long means 0. The top and bottom will be uneven, and you don't need to follow any pattern. Recovering your seed phrase is as easy as measuring the length of 256 planks. You can plant nettles to discourage curious seed thiefs. Let's say you need it nettle seeds.
You'll need to maintain your fence though, once the planks start rotting your bits become inaccurate.

Couldn't resist a slight detour from the main topic...

I'll allow it

[1714245352]

1714245352

[apogio]

Provided your passphrases are strong enough. You strike me as someone who does indeed use long and complex passphrases, but as we know many people use weak passwords, use names or dates, reuse passwords across multiple accounts, and so on, and the same applies to wallet passphrases as well.

Having seen that, I don't want to create a separate topic for this (unless Loyce wants me to), but I want to define what a strong passphrase means and add a question. I will not discover the wheel, but I will add some examples.

Personally, I currently have a wallet and I have set a passphrase which is longer than 20 characters and it includes all types of characters (small, capital, numbers, symbols). I think this is a super strong passphrase and of course I keep double backup (separate from the seed).

I believe this website gives a good estimation of how long it would take to crack a passphrase: https://random-ize.com/how-long-to-hack-pass/ , but I also want your opinion. I didn't put my passphrase and I didn't try anything similar or close to my passphrase.

Let me give examples.

1. "stayaway" - 1 min 13 sec
2. "StAyAwaY" - 5 hrs 13 min
3. "stay away" - 1 month 6 hrs
4. "StAy AwaY" - 2 years 4 months
5. "St4y Aw4Y" - 6 years 5 months
6. "stayawayfromme" - 730 years 6 months
7. "Stay Aw4y Fr0m Me" - 39555681645472620 years

Now my question is: This website doesn't seem to take into account dictionary attacks. Is there a website that can do both? I mean password number 3 (and perhaps more than this one) could be found much easier than brute-forcing.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Now my question is: This website doesn't seem to take into account dictionary attacks. Is there a website that can do both? I mean password number 3 (and perhaps more than this one) could be found much easier than brute-forcing.

So on examination, it seems all that site is doing is making sets of "lowercase", "uppercase", "numbers", "symbols", and then calculating a strength based on number of characters and number of different sets you use. So any string of 9 characters including lowercase letters and symbols will be given the exact same strength. For example, this string "~gm$r!)zf" is also given 1 month and 6 hours, despite being significantly more secure than "stay away". So yeah, a poor way of calculating password strength.

I've never really used password strength sites like this, but a quick search found another one which does take in to account dictionary words - https://www.passwordmonster.com/
For "stay away" it gives 114 seconds, and correctly identifies two dictionary words.
For "~gm$r!)zf" it gives 931 years.

However, this also seems very inaccurate to me. With 26 lowercase letters and 33 symbols in the standard ASCII set, then that second password has 59⁹ combinations, which is around 53 bits. There is no way it would take almost 1,000 years to crack a 53 bit password.

The best passwords, and the most accurate way of calculating strength, are those which are completely random and draw from lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and symbols, without any patterns. Then you can simply do 95^x, where x is the length of your password. A 20 character password of this format gives you >128 bits of security, which is what you should be aiming for. As soon as you replace a string of those characters with a dictionary word, then how much this decreases your security is unpredictable.

[LoyceV]

3. "stay away" - 1 month 6 hrs

I wouldn't trust a site that gives such a terrible estimate.

For password strength, it helps a lot to have many rounds of encryption. Keepass back in the days allowed to manually set the number of rounds. If it takes 1 second to unlock your data, it also takes 1 second for each try. Brute-force resistance is one of the great things of BIP38 encryption. I'd love to see a similar standard for encrypting seed phrases.

[apogio]

3. "stay away" - 1 month 6 hrs

I wouldn't trust a site that gives such a terrible estimate.

Yeap that's what I thought and why I asked. Thanks

The best passwords, and the most accurate way of calculating strength, are those which are completely random and draw from lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and symbols, without any patterns. Then you can simply do 95^x, where x is the length of your password. A 20 character password of this format gives you >128 bits of security, which is what you should be aiming for. As soon as you replace a string of those characters with a dictionary word, then how much this decreases your security is unpredictable.

Everyone will agree with what you say. However, without talking about my passphrase, one would argue that it's better to have a "long" passphrase (including lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and symbols) but that is also "easier" to remember. Isn't it true? I mean, going for something like "29$_918jHlahq2)814nd000qhh<>ajL" is perfect, but you must back it up perfectly and forget any chances to "remember" it. You will ask, why remember it when you can just note it down twice? Correct! But it's good to have also have a chance of remembering it if needed.

[LoyceV]

Everyone will agree with what you say. However, without talking about my passphrase, one would argue that it's better to have a "long" passphrase (including lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and symbols) but that is also "easier" to remember. Isn't it true? I mean, going for something like "29$_918jHlahq2)814nd000qhh<>ajL" is perfect, but you must back it up perfectly and forget any chances to "remember" it. You will ask, why remember it when you can just note it down twice? Correct! But it's good to have also have a chance of remembering it if needed.

I'll throw in a counter argument: what's the point of remembering the passphrase, if you don't remember the seed words it belongs to?

[apogio]

I'll throw in a counter argument: what's the point of remembering the passphrase, if you don't remember the seed words it belongs to?

I do! 

However I will not remember them in the future. And I will not remember my passphrase in the future. I back it up so I don't need to remember it.

Anyway, it's not the best discussion since I agree with both of you and I find it difficult to argue on behalf of other people  :-p

[satscraper]

Instead of wasting planks (and needing a bigger garden), you could simply use 2 different planks: 201 cm long means 1, 199 cm long means 0. T

The beauty is in simplicity.  Instead of using different planks you could simply use them all of equal length, say 200 cm but fixed at different height, say 190 cm to represent 0 and 191 to serve as 1. One more method - all planks are equal in length, all of them are fixed at same  level  but with screws differing with head style or drive types needed. The choice is virtually unlimited to represent both 0 and 1. Slotted looks natural for 1 while Socked - for 0.

[LoyceV]

screws differing with head style or drive types needed.

Not bad, not bad at all Slotted is 1, Allen is 0.

On second thought: doesn't that stand out much more than a slightly uneven fence? I mean: I've seen thousands of uneven fences, but I've never seen different screws in all planks. Then again, I never look that close either

[o_e_l_e_o]

I'll throw in a counter argument: what's the point of remembering the passphrase, if you don't remember the seed words it belongs to?

There is actually a good argument for being able to remember a passphrase if you use a hardware wallet.

Most hardware wallets will let you apply a passphrase to the seed phrase which is already stored within the device, without having to re-enter the seed phrase. So if you have your hardware wallet with you, then if you remember (one or more of) your passphrase(s), then you can access your hidden wallets. Even if you are just using your hardware wallet at home, it means you don't have to go and dig out your back up.

I'm a big proponent of not relying on your memory for anything, and you should definitely have your passphrase backed up on paper separate to your seed phrase in at least two locations. However, I have more than one passphrase which I have entered in to various hardware wallets often enough that I can remember it, despite it being long and complicated. The same holds true for a number of different decryption keys, since all my devices use full disk encryption. Although all of these are backed up on paper, it would be a real pain to have to go and retrieve a back up every time I turned on my computer.

[satscraper]

On second thought: doesn't that stand out much more than a slightly uneven fence? I mean: I've seen thousands of uneven fences, but I've never seen different screws in all planks. Then again, I never look that close either

I think the most problem will be in  the choice of the quantity of planks in you fence. If you choose it  exactly 256 it would be too bad. To disguise the real thing you should attach to the meaningful part of it  the fake "prefix"  consisting of N planks  and fake "suffix"  of M planks and use on them the same mix of screws as sensitive section holds.

[m2017]

~snip
You can easily create a backup by taking some family pictures in the garden.
Who's going to notice? And who's going to look for patters that could be seed phrases everywhere now?

How is it “who's going to notice”? Now I’m definitely going to look more closely at family photos with fences.

This method has a small flaw: a family photo. Surely it will be on paper. And as you all already know, the photo is applied to paper, which is very sensitive to the effects of fire and water, and here we come to the same problem that arises when saving a paper wallet.

Solution: Engrave (artistic or laser engraving) a "some family pictures in the garden" on metal?

It seems that we are overcomplicating the system and returning to the same original starting point (or dot).

Encrypt data not with a fence, but with patterns on a metal miniature.