Topic: I think this would be secure, but want to make sure (Read 1673 times)

That's actually a really good idea.  Although my bank accounts for my fiat money are all online banking.  I think one of them has physical branches that I could use though.

I would make two plastic paper back-up and secure them in a bank safe (located in an other city or even an other country if you want really careful)

jl2012 is right, physical security is a totally different matter.  I'll definitely be making a paper backup of the wallet as insurance in case the offline laptop's hard drive crashes or something like that, as I mentioned in my OP.  

if you want to be paranoid, then having a laptop that has never been online is still not absolutely safe unless the machine is also physically locked away somewhere safe along with any backups (paper or otherwise, preferably in different locations). Either that or the Machines HDD (and ram if you are super paranoid) gets physically shredded after any paper wallets are created.

otherwise there really is nothing stopping an unwitting person sometime in the future from installing a new OS or removing the HDD and putting it into another computer.
I think if you go too far though the chance of you losing the keys becomes much greater than someone stealing them.

Physical security is a completely different topic. Obviously you can't use cryptography to fight with a gunman

if you want to be paranoid, then having a laptop that has never been online is still not absolutely safe unless the machine is also physically locked away somewhere safe along with any backups (paper or otherwise, preferably in different locations). Either that or the Machines HDD gets physically shredded after any paper wallets are created.

otherwise there really is nothing stopping an unwitting person sometime in the future from installing a new OS or removing the HD and putting it into another computer.
I think if you go too far though the chance of you losing the keys becomes much greater than someone stealing them.

Depends on how paranoid you are, you may compare the address generated by the online computer with the one by the offline computer before you make a payment request. A smart virus in your online computer may replace the address generated by Armory.

Yeah, I am realizing that from reading these responses and rereading Alan's cold storage how to guide.  I'm planning on buying a cheapo laptop for this and disabling the network drivers so it won't ever go online.

If you want cold storage, you need to generate your private in an off-line computer, and never let the computer connects to the network again.

Anything else is not absolutely safe

Good point.  I don't think my computer is infected, but it's better to be safe and set it up the proper way.  I guess it's time to invest in an offline computer.

If that offline computer is already infected with a trojan/virus if might copy the key and transmit it to where the hacker wanted when it gets connected, even though you have removed it prior to getting it online, if you're certain that you're computer is clean and you remove the key before going online, than it would be safe, otherwise not.

Thanks guys, this definitely gives me something to think about security wise.  One question: since I don't yet have the computer I will eventually be using as an offline computer, would it be secure to just create a new wallet / private key while my computer is disconnected from the internet and then move the private key off the computer before reconnecting it to the internet?

I'm planning on buying a relatively large amount of bitcoins soon, and want to make sure that my plan for safekeeping them is as secure as I think it is.  I do not yet have a laptop that I'll use for an offline computer, but plan on using this particular purchase strictly for the purposes of a long term investment, so I don't plan on spending the coins any time soon.

Here's my setup.  I'm using Windows 7 64 bit, and I have Armory installed.  The wallet I plan on using is offline.  After creating the wallet, I transferred the private key to a flash drive so that money cannot be spent from this wallet without me explicitly moving the private key back on to my primary computer, or more likely, buying an offline laptop and moving the private key over there.  I will be making a paper backup of this wallet to ensure that I'll have access to my bitcoins in the event that my flash drive crashes and I lose the private key.

Is this setup secure?  I want to ensure that I'm secure from both losing the bitcoins to hard drive crashes and keyloggers / trojans.

Update:  Oh, I should add that while I haven't yet done this, I plan on encrypting my Armory private keys on my flash drive just as an extra layer of security, on the off chance that there are any trojans out there that look for bitcoin private keys in flash drives.  Long term, I'll definitely be investing in a laptop that I'll use as an offline bitcoin storage device, but until I get that point, I think this ought to be fairly secure.

For large amounts of BTC Id use several 2 of 3 split paper wallets. Load each with up to 10 BTC and put them in different secure places (safe, deposit box, burry underground, etc.)

I actually like the idea of putting them underground in many different places so when I die there will be big treasure hunt with riddles to solve and all the good three investigators stuff

-snip-
It sounds like secure. I don't think you will loose your private key if your wallet is locked.

Im not 100% sure I understand what you want to say, but it sounds like:

buy computer A
generate new key on old computer B
copy key from B to A
somehow make sure that key is no longer on B
assume key is now safe on A because A was never online, while totally forgetting that the key comes from B, which is constantly online

Its irrelevant if you encrypt the keys on the USB drive. If B is infected your setup is not safe. If B is safe, why bother buying A in the first place?

If you want to make sure you have a secure private key on a dedicated machine, generate the key on that machine.