[PULL] Wallet Private Key Encryption

[koin]

I still think encryption should be disabled by default.

It is.

when going from an unencrypted wallet and then adding a password, what happens to the addresses that may already have had bitcoins and other addresses that were in the keypool but had not yet been used?

in other words, after i encrypt are those coins now at password-protected addresses?  or does the situation exist where access to one of my old backups of my wallet.dat mean i could still lose those coins that haven't been spent (or moved as part of a change transaction) since the point that i started running with encryption?

[Matt Corallo]

when going from an unencrypted wallet and then adding a password, what happens to the addresses that may already have had bitcoins and other addresses that were in the keypool but had not yet been used?

in other words, after i encrypt are those coins now at password-protected addresses?  or does the situation exist where access to one of my old backups of my wallet.dat mean i could still lose those coins that haven't been spent (or moved as part of a change transaction) since the point that i started running with encryption?

The encryption process is just simple take old keys (including addresses, pool keys, etc) and encrypt the private part.  No crazyness, the same keys are still kept so your backups still have the keys to your coins (until new keys are generated).

[mmortal03]

I just have to say that as soon as this gets implemented, the market price of bitcoin will quite likely go up. I don't know of a more critical addition on the development side that could enhance the bitcoin value more so than wallet encryption.

[netrin]

I wonder if the proposed implementation would allow the actual keys to be stored on a smart card, much like the OpenPGP smart cards that kgo is selling ( http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=26918 ). Or otherwise include some physical factor? The smart card memory limits the number of keys stored, but that is not likely a problem for a 'savings' wallet with a finite number of recycled keys.

[Matt Corallo]

Pulled, should show up on the next nightly build (see my sig).

[XIU]

Pulled, should show up on the next nightly build (see my sig).

Nice, thanks

[rabit]

I wonder if the proposed implementation would allow the actual keys to be stored on a smart card, much like the OpenPGP smart cards that kgo is selling ( http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=26918 ). Or otherwise include some physical factor? The smart card memory limits the number of keys stored, but that is not likely a problem for a 'savings' wallet with a finite number of recycled keys.

Your OpenPGP card is for RSA keys like the most (perhaps even all) smart cards which you can buy in small amounts so you cant store Bitcoin keys as keys on it. If your card has some memory for data objects than you can use this patch https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8091.0 for storing but this would be more or less the same as storing on an encrypted USB stick.
 

[XIU]

Pulled, should show up on the next nightly build (see my sig).

The menu option to encrypt your wallet didn't show up in the windows build, is there something else I'm missing?

[Matt Corallo]

Pulled, should show up on the next nightly build (see my sig).

The menu option to encrypt your wallet didn't show up in the windows build, is there something else I'm missing?

In the Settings menu, it shows up for me.

[netrin]

I wonder if the proposed implementation would allow the actual keys to be stored on a smart card, much like the OpenPGP smart cards that kgo is selling ( http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=26918 ). Or otherwise include some physical factor? The smart card memory limits the number of keys stored, but that is not likely a problem for a 'savings' wallet with a finite number of recycled keys.

Your OpenPGP card is for RSA keys like the most (perhaps even all) smart cards which you can buy in small amounts so you cant store Bitcoin keys as keys on it. If your card has some memory for data objects than you can use this patch https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8091.0 for storing but this would be more or less the same as storing on an encrypted USB stick.

Ideally the private elliptic signing keys would be stored on a one-way device, but even storing the encryption key has the advantage that an attack on a copied wallet must be launched against the symmetric key (DES3, IDEA, etc) or asym RSA rather than a human generated passphrase.