Topic: Are bitcoins still safe even on computers disconnected from the Internet? - page 2. (Read 2156 times)

This could only effect a Bitcoiner if he were a criminal or other that the government wanted to do surveillance on. If a three letter agency wants to put video surveillance in your house and they have a warrant to do it or can call you a terrorist and do it without a judge there is nothing you can do about it. It's likely that you will never know or the surveillance will end with your arrest. The devises cost money and I doubt they are just going to have Dell start installing them on every machine they sell.

Also Bitcoiners are computer builders (or at least used to be when we were cranking out coin with video cards). I only build my own machines from parts so I know what every component in every machine I own is for and how it's made because I research it to death. If you don't "roll your own" then shield your machine from radio transmission with a homemade faraday cage and only use hard wired internet connections.

Mobile devices are a different story. You should always assume that every communication you have whether voice, text or posting is being monitored and can be broadcast to every one in the world. They will never be safe from surveillance even without any additionally installed components.

Core devs? Pfft, they aren't fixing the core issues fast enough they sure as hell aren't working on a problem as exotic as this one.

Everything is possible in this constantly changing world.A dynamic world,has many unknown/unseen mysteries going on around

No, actually the real questions are exactly those I asked in the OP.  Why?  Because it's my thread, and because I don't know much about this technology and was hoping to get reasoned responses from those more knowledgeable than I.

Notice that every response prior to yours actually addressed the OP whereas 60% of posts after yours (excluding this one) do not.  Hence, to me, your post is boring.

But I'm genuinely curious to know why the topic isn't worth your consideration.  It seems to imply that you must know something about the topic if you can conclude it's boring or unworthy of consideration as a realistic threat.

Yes and yes. Both paypal and credit cards have great consumer protections that protect the customer against fraud by the merchant. Customers are also protected in the event their card is somehow stolen.

The big giant difference between paypal / debit / credit cards and bitcoin is that the first category generally has consumer protections - if your money is stolen, you can get it back.  If your money is stolen one way or another with bitcoins, you're screwed.

These kinds of problems are why first generation computers will never be completely eliminated.

When NSA really needs to hack into specific computers in another country via radio waves, the data saved in that computer must be very sensitive and critical of the national security. Once the hack is carried out, the holder of the data and the country will know this attack. I think it is not worth to do such kind of attack that just steal cryptocurrency. I would not worry about this.  

I would say yes. Even if your PayPal is hacked you'll likely be able to recover the funds, most of the time anyway. Bitcoin however doesn't have such a good track record in this area.... I don't think I've ever heard of someone recovering all of the stolen funds after a hack.

blah blah blah boring topic.

the real question is

Is using paypal safe on computers connected from the Internet?
Is using debit/credit cards safe on computers connected from the Internet?

If your hardware has been tampered with, you're screwed. You need to source your hardware from somewhere you trust and check it as best you can (it isn't possible to 100% verify it hasn't been tampered with). I would say it's a viable threat because realistically almost anyone can do this kind of thing, it's not hard or expensive to do and there are countless ways you could exfiltrate data from an airgapped machine if you can modify the hardware,


It is quite easy to defend yourself against a thief getting access to your data. Your airgapped machine should be full-disk encrypted at the very least. Somebody stealing your device shouldn't be able to access your data,  What you need to be worried about is somebody stealing your device and giving it back without you noticing, because a tampered bootloader or modified hardware can EASILY get access to your data.

Yeah...master-P has a good point here, imho.  You're far more likely to have your cold storage laptop stolen than have the NSA use radio waves to hack into said computer. 

For that to happen, several things have to happen.  First, the NSA has to know you have bitcoins.  Second, they have to be interested in stealing your bitcoins.  And third, they have to go to the trouble of going to a relatively short distance in order to use said radio waves to hack into your computer.  Odds are, they've got better things to do, like worry about terrorists and such.  Which isn't to say that it's impossible, but yeah, I'd be worrying about keeping your laptop secure from physical theft way more than being worried about something like this.

I would worry less about the NSA hacking into your computer via radio waves and more about the potential for your computer to be actually stolen.

I would think that many people would likely assume that since a computer is not connected to the internet there is little/no risk of getting hacked so they would use a weak/no password. This would make their bitcoin vulnerable once physical access to the computer is established.

If someone wants what you have so bad that they want/can can connect to your devices while they are turned off/not connected to internet, I would say you are pretty much screwed. If youre not screwed now, it is only a matter of time. Highly unlikely for a few bitcoins.

Your doctored desktop computer or router can be phoning home by using your iPhone that you shut off. I wouldn't worry too much about it though, but it's definitely a theoretical possibility.

http://m.nydailynews.com/news/national/nsa-hacked-100-000-computers-radio-signals-article-1.1580254

This is fairly old news, and I'm also not familiar with what kind of threat this might pose.  Hopefully someone more knowledgable can share their input.

Since it's now no secret that the NSA has the capacity to hack into computers via radio waves (though apparently only on computers constructed with the proper hardware), what does this mean for things like Armory's offline transactions?  Do you believe that this poses a viable threat, particularly if companies increasingly integrate backdoor radio transceivers into household computers and mobile devices?

Moreover, has this issue been considered by the core devs?