Decrypting Wallet - What if there was a trojan? Could i quickly send coin to pap

philip2000uk

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Quote from: Ploo on November 09, 2013, 01:10:41 PM

If the trojan was written to target the bitcoin-qt wallet then it'll be listening out for the decryption event by some means. As soon as it has your password it'll clear out your wallet - and it'll do it faster than you think you could.

I see, i'll try and be careful

philip2000uk

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Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on November 09, 2013, 01:05:14 PM

Quote from: philip2000uk on November 09, 2013, 12:45:15 PM

That's good so at least I will have time, like maybe 10 minutes

Anyway, I'll make sure that my computer stays clean and transfer my backup wallet to a new laptop one day. Another thing. my Wallet.dat says, MPEG4 movie file, which is a bit strange. I'm guessing because I don't have any program really that reads .dat?

Probably not. Most trojans are designed to operate in near realtime. At best this results in a race condition, you and trojan transmit a tx for the same "coins", a double spend and it becomes a race to see which ones ends up in the block (the other one ends up invalid). I don't know for sure but to avoid a race condition it would be pretty trivial for a trojan to disable/block your outbound transaction to ensure it always wins so you might be looking at a guaranteed loss.

If you suspect your computer is infected, then don't use it. Open the wallet.dat on a different computer.
If you suspect the password for your wallet has been compromised. Create a new walle with a new password (or temporarily an offfline/paper wallet) and transfer the full balance of your old wallet to the new wallet.

I'll do that then one day as soon as I get enough knowledge to keep safe. I will buy a clean laptop. It's just a what if. I don't visit dodgy websites...I'll keep reading up on it.

Ploo

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If the trojan was written to target the bitcoin-qt wallet then it'll be listening out for the decryption event by some means. As soon as it has your password it'll clear out your wallet - and it'll do it faster than you think you could.

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: philip2000uk on November 09, 2013, 12:45:15 PM

That's good so at least I will have time, like maybe 10 minutes

Anyway, I'll make sure that my computer stays clean and transfer my backup wallet to a new laptop one day. Another thing. my Wallet.dat says, MPEG4 movie file, which is a bit strange. I'm guessing because I don't have any program really that reads .dat?

Probably not. Most trojans are designed to operate in near realtime. At best this results in a race condition, you and trojan transmit a tx for the same "coins", a double spend and it becomes a race to see which ones ends up in the block (the other one ends up invalid). I don't know for sure but to avoid a race condition it would be pretty trivial for a trojan to disable/block your outbound transaction to ensure it always wins so you might be looking at a guaranteed loss.

If you suspect your computer is infected, then don't use it. Open the wallet.dat on a different computer.
If you suspect the password for your wallet has been compromised. Create a new wallet on a secure computer with a new unique strong password (or temporarily an offline/paper wallet) and transfer the full balance of your old wallet to the new wallet.

philip2000uk

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Activity: 276

Merit: 250

Quote from: sushi on November 09, 2013, 12:42:45 PM

if your wallet was compromised, make a new wallet and transfer your BTC right away, then put it on the paper

That's good so at least I will have time, like maybe 10 minutes

Anyway, I'll make sure that my computer stays clean and transfer my backup wallet to a new laptop one day. Another thing. my Wallet.dat says, MPEG4 movie file, which is a bit strange. I'm guessing because I don't have any program really that reads .dat?

sushi

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ASIC Myth Buster

if your wallet was compromised, make a new wallet and transfer your BTC right away, then put it on the paper

philip2000uk

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Activity: 276

Merit: 250

Quote from: ?? on ??

Quote from: philip2000uk on November 09, 2013, 12:26:51 PM

If there was a trojan hiding on my computer and i decided to decrypt the wallet. Would I have enough time to send the bitcoins to a paper wallet?

Use Armory's offline transaction signing feature and don't worry about it.

I'm unsure of what that is, I need to research more

I just have the wallet already when i was a noob. But quickly encrypted and backed it up on HDD. So I guess I could put it onto a clean laptop then decrypt and generate paper ones.

Thanks

philip2000uk

sr. member

Activity: 276

Merit: 250

If there was a trojan hiding on my computer and i decided to decrypt the wallet. Would I have enough time to send the bitcoins to a paper wallet?

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