Topic: Astravault - Bitcoin Wallet Backup (Read 1888 times)

Astravault is a python program to encrypt the bitcoin wallet, email it to yourself to back it up and decrypt it if necessary.

The outgoing mail default subject is the bland 'Astronomy Data', to make the email innocuous.

The project is at:
https://github.com/Unthinkingbit/astravault

The astravault script is at:
https://github.com/Unthinkingbit/astravault/blob/master/astravault.py

To Install:
For astravault to run, you need python 2.x, astravault will probably not run with python 3.x.  To check if it is on your machine, in a terminal type:
python

If python 2.x is not on your machine, download the latest python 2.x, which is available from:
http://www.python.org/download/

You will also need OpenSSL.  To check if it is on your machine, type:
openssl

If it is not on your machine, the openssl home page is at:
http://www.openssl.org/

Set up:
When astravault is set up, calling 'python astravault.py' will encrypt the bitcoin wallet and email to you.

To set up astravault, first get the name of the outgoing SMTP mail server of your isp, it is usually something like mail.myisp.com.  You can usually find the name of the mail server on the isp web site.

Then, if you are not using your isp mail, for instance if you are using webmail like gmail, get the name of your email address at your isp.

Once you have your isp email address and the name of you outgoing mail server, you can set the parameters with the command line or with a spreadsheet program.

To set up astravault with the command line, type:

python astravault.py -f [email protected] -ma mail.myisp.com -t [email protected]

Documentation:
When astravault is installed, type:
python astravault.py -h

to bring up the documentation.  The documentation is also at the top of the astravault script file at:
https://github.com/Unthinkingbit/astravault/blob/master/astravault.py

Testing:
It has been developed on Ubuntu, it has not been tested on any other platforms.

Conclusion:
Once set up, astravault makes it easy to back up your wallet, so you if your computer dies, at least you won't have to worry about your bitcoins.  It does not encrypt your wallet on disk, so a cracker could still steal your wallet on your computer; astravault is only for email backup.