Topic: How to sign a message?! - page 44. (Read 141656 times)

Thank you soo much dear OP I really managed to sign a message After reading your Post. Because I was in truble before and redsn0w gave me your thread Link.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/could-not-verify-my-sign-message-please-help-me-1009470

And your post proved helpful to me 

I sent you Tips: https://blockchain.info/tx/f97ba8bab5790faa394a7d032207bb6478bdf628dccb06361b73bf4b9b138386

Great post. You made me remember the very first days on this forum. We started almost together to explore this crazy world of bitcoin from two different parts of the world. It is more than a year now. So much has happened in between. I think hilariousandco also started almost at the same time...

Added signing with blockchain.info. It includes an example how to post a signed messages on bitcointalk.org with the format suggested by theymos.

Yes, bc.i is still on my todo list. Since its so popular it will be the next I add. I hope to have time for that tonight.


Glad you like it. As Gisado pointed out you can take the address from my profile ( 1Le5jXpxvANv3v5Vfx9FY3XZjHjRm8fvzg ). I will probably not do Import / Export tutorials, because there are many combinations and different formats used. Im sure you can get help in tech support[1] (for bitcoin core) or in the alt clients[2] section (for most other wallets) though.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=4.0
[2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=37.0

See below.

Wow great guide! I wish this was posted earlier so I didn't have to ask a million people to help me sign an address xD. Can you do other tutorials, like transferring an address to another wallet via private key? I remember when I used vanity address it took me literally an hour  to figure what to type and how to transfer. Thanks!

Also can you PM me your address? I want to also send a small too as a thanks to your effort you put into this!

Thanks for the how to! very good, now i understand what mean sign with a address, and i have noticed that from blockchain.info we can verify and sign address too that is great! thank you again

That is correct and theymos said in the past that the best way to prevent this is to send a PM with a signed message to DefaultTrust and write down the PM ID. You could even delete the PM afterwards so a hacker can not see it. It is however still in the system and theymos can access it as he also controlls the DefaulTrust account, but never deletes PM send there.

Another way would be in an auction thread, since they can not be edited and not deleted.

What Gisado suggests might also work, but it would give someone else (the person quoting) power to manipulate.

Make a thread on reputations board (it looks like there is common place to post it) and ask someone to quote it (so even if your post is edited cracker have to crack quoter's account to successfully fool others - and of course, they will notice that it has been edited too.) and lock. I asked mods to move it to Archival to be extra sure. (I don't know if it can be edited after unlocking on Archival boards.)

Tutorials here(GNU Privacy Handbook) seem to be official one.

The post you mentioned of Theymos reads as

-----BEGIN BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----
My account has been hacked/lost. Please reset the email to . The current date is .
-----BEGIN SIGNATURE-----


-----END BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Here is the unedited post where I posted that address: ...
OR
I sent that address to someone in a PM with PM ID#...


-------------------------------------------------------

But here in case if my account is hacked, the person may edit my post where my bitcoin address is present and I wont have any access to my PMs then. So in this case, I will have to note the post ID and the PM ID to be on a safe side?

For everyone that tried to verify this, but couldnt get it working on brainwallet. Its missing a "-"
it should be:

but its:

Every other tool used to verify should not have that problem. I just copied the modified version from bensam123.


An unedited message or post with a bitcoin address can actually help you to recover a hacked account. Theymos mentions this in the thread about restoring accounts[1]. Its not fail safe though.

Regarding PGP, there are probably over 9000 good tutorials. If you find one that works for you thats great. Just be carefull what you download. If you feel you need someone to show you the way, attent a local cryptoparty[2]. I will focus on signatures with bitcoin addresses first and once that todo list is processed start with PGP.


[1] https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/recovering-hacked-accounts-or-accounts-with-lost-passwords-497545
[2] https://www.cryptoparty.in/

Awesome thread, very useful and complete tutorial
also i found this tutorial for PGP (PDF file) , its that right tutorial for use PGP?


~iki

Is it safe to connect your account with the bitcoin address? I have heard some people say that they don't want to take the risk of connecting the account as it could be hacked.

Dude awesome tutorial.
Signing with bitcoin is a pretty secure system and it needs more adoption IMHO, this will hopefuly make it more commonplace.
I was thinking about writing a tutorial for this within the week but you already took my place so TY for saving me some work 

It's about time someone did this, good job! I've seen people, who had a wallet for months and still didn't know how to sign and verify a message. This thread should remain on top of the section.

If you use GNU/Linux, this is easy guide. If Windows, use gpg4win. Just follow the instructions from gpg4win, and you're all set.

(Make sure not to use SHA-1 while creating!)

I have added it for the to do list for now, not sure yet.


Note the explanation below is simplified to give a rough idea about PGP. There are many detailed aspects to it that I dont want to go into here.

PGP is used since the early 90's. Its an asymmetric encryption / signature system that is used for a multitude of things now. Its now most commonly used for its intended use, to encrypt and sign mails. The encryption was so powerful that it was against USA law to export the software for a while unless significantly weakened. It had to leave the country via source code printed in a book. This is typically refered to as the crypto wars.

Without going into technical details, the main difference is how people use it. Its more likely for someone here to post a bitcoin address than it is for someone to post a full PGP key. While many of us have several bitcoin addresses to sign something with, you usually only have one or very few PGP keys (1 personal, 1 business, 1 software development, etc.). For PGP there also exists what is called the Web of Trust (WoT). If used correctly it allows you to be 100% sure that the person you are exchanging message with is exactly the person they claim, as in: it has been verified in person by someone you trust and have met in person. The biggest problem with PGP keys is to verify its owner. Same like a bitcoin address anyone can just create a PGP key pair and claim to be Bill Murray.

But, say Bill Murray (B) meets Christoph Waltz (C) in person. They sign each others keys to verify the respective owner. Should I ever meet C I can personally verify C's key and thus know B's key belongs indeed to Bill Murray. These chains are typically longer and form a complex network, the Web of Trust.

Well done shorena, ths guide is very good and full of useful information. Do you still own this address 1Le5jXpxvANv3v5Vfx9FY3XZjHjRm8fvzg ? A little donation will arrive in minutes , take it just for your efforts in try to keep/help a good community.

wow, thank you shorena it was pretty usefull. actually i was looking for something like this

i have one question though. what is the difference between the message signed this way and the one called PGP that i've seen most escrows use and they link to keybase.io website