Topic: List of Bitcoin Companies with Adequate Backup--Please Submit (Read 5549 times)

TL;DR: My backups setup might seem pretty good compared to some, however I would like to convince myself it is adequate as I am probably less likely to imagine it so than others might be.

A lot of the posts talk about security too, not just backups, and many people may not even know what it is that I do, so I will start by describing some of what it is that I have that could benefit from backups.

I have some game sites on third party hosting, basically as tests of different game software and with so far so little money involved that if they needed to be restored from backups it is likely they'd just be shut down instead, the players compensated with in game goods/currencies from some other game such as whichever one is up next for testing. So I won't worry about their backup situation right now, they are not mission-critical and we might be better off without them as most turn out to be fundamentally flawed or, even if they work, to just be black holes to throw money at with no return. If they do pay for themselves though, then maybe I could also consider using them as yet another place to push triply-crypted backups to. Currently I have their level of hosting tier low enough though that using them to store such things would be frowned upon as they are currently a tier of hosting intended only for websites not for file-serving or file-storage.

So the servers I am concerned with right now are the cryptocoin-mission-critical servers, which are right here with me behind my steel-plated door.

Mostly of importance is the Open Transactions server. It is not accessed by means of web-browsers but, rather, by its own crypto-secured communications protocol by which remote users' clients communicate with it.

I have a second server that is not even powered up, because it is horribly noisy and does not need to be turned on most of the time, but which has a hard disk as large as the main drive in the running server so can be fired up to transfer backups onto.

I wrote scripts for doing backups, but no longer remember the exact details of what it is that they do (as in which username exactly sends on to which username type details); I am glad to have run across this thread as it motivates me to go look at those scripts to check exactly what they do and whether there is more I should now have them do in the light of development that has taken place since they were written.

Offhand I recall that they have three separate usernames involved, so that a backup once made is sent gpg-encrypted to a second user's pubkey then that second user re-crypts it to a third user's pubkey, because I did not want to risk offsite backups' security to just a single layer of 4096-bit encryption.

I would also like any ideas people can offer about how to deal with /home/*/.ssh and /home/*/.gpg directories, which I deliberately leave out when backing up home-directories partly because there is not much use having a backup of those types of keys if one needs them in order to access and/or decrypt the backups. I would prefer not to let backups of those critical (due to containing keys) directories onto third party machines at all, so I am considering using USB flash drives physically stored in safe deposit boxes or some such approach for offsite backup of that key (pun intended) data.

Having thus sanitised the normal backups from containing any .ssh or .gpg directories and triple-crypted them using keys located in the areas that they no longer themselves contain, I have been trying out various third party online data-storage sites whereby I can copy a backup to a certain directory on my hard drive that is automatically copied over to offsite storage.

Since I have not so far been dealing with significant sums of money, I have so far included among the offsite storage sites tested some that require me to run a daemon in order for this copying over to their site to happen. I create a new username for each such service, running its daemon as that user, and having it mirror only a directory located in that user's homedirectory. I have also been looking at things like GNUnet.

One of the offsite storage solutions I looked at offered to back up even stuff that does not live in that user's home-directory; I am thinking that a (closed source) daemon that is willing to go browsing over my entire filesystem, even as one specific user, is probably a bit too nosy to be considered for use once I do switch over to "real use", working with serious real money.

At least one service actually works using normal existing remote disk access systems instead of closed source (thus totally untrustable on general principles) custom daemons of their own devising. Those are kinds I am most interested in hearing about more of as it seems likely they are ultimately the only ones I should be considering using.

As to frequency of backups, that I will have to tune in accordance with usage. Right now days or weeks go by between third party tests of my Open Transactions server, so simply doing a backup after each such testing-session seems sufficient. As we move into "real use", maybe hourly will seem reasonable. Having cron run the scripts at any desired frequency is hardly rocket-science.

However, I believe the /home/*/.ot directories are also being segregated out like the .ssh and .gpg directories, so in any case the OT server and all the clients I use with it can be backed up more regularly than other less mission-critical subsystems once actually in constant use.

Input on how best to do these backups is very welcome.

-MarkM-

I was just about to say that. I could elaborate much on our whole infrastructure
and I happily do to people contacting me and wanting to know more,
but to what means is it necessary on a public forum? other than to allow bigger
insight for anonymous shady people wishing to do harm. Correct me if I am wrong.
And this is not me trying to hide behind security by obscurity, which is just plain stupid.

None the less this is what we have publicized and I would think it is prudent enough https://walletbit.com/about/security


July 15 2011 -> https://walletbit.com/about/security


Phinnaeus Gage, You are more than welcome to contact me directly, if you want to know more. As long as you do not disclose it publicly.


Speaking on behalf of WalletBit.

So those companies say they have a sweet backup plan..

What is it? I can tell you BitVPS is backed up to 100 servers globally. Doesn't make it true.

We're not a big company or anything (as a matter of fact we are only two people) but BitMarket.eu takes every measure to protect our users' data and BTC:

- we use cold/hot wallet system
- we have hourly backups of database on-site
- we have daily backups of database off-site
- we have daily backups of wallet.dat on and off-site
- all backups are encrypted with 2048-bit RSA key before sending off-site, private key is known only to one person, protected by passphrase
- site codebase is in mercurial repository, cloned in several places on and off-site.

It's not too much to ask of something as big as MtGox or Bitcoinica.

We at bitcoin-analytics.com automatically replicate sensitive data (user billing info and login history) to a backup server at a different hosting. We also have third server at yet another hosting fully operational so we can manually switch DNS records with little downtime if current bitcoin-analytics.com server goes down. We also monitor resource usage on all our servers.

Given that we are not an exchange and users only give us microscopic subscription fees, I think the backup is adequate

Yeah it's too bad they are so expensive though. I doubt we will see much of that until there is some major profit to be made and many businesses involved.

My recommendation is with an auditing firm who does a SAS 70 / SSAE 16 audit.  This is how this problem is solved in the regular business world.  The auditors are paid by the business to carry out the audit, but are on the hook for the statements they make.  So if an auditor says "Yes they have a backup procedure and they follow it" and it turns out that there was no backup whatsoever and that the auditor just made it up to cover for his "buddy" client, that's liability for the auditor.

Sadly, with all the fees and interest, we are paying for it. And we were the ones that paid for it, after we paid for it. Damn credit agencies anyways

Well, no. As they say, "he who pays the piper calls the tune". And look how poorly the credit rating agencies did in 2007.

Much better that the auditors are paid by the customers and depositors, than by the businesses.

+1

Best by someone known and trustworthy in bitcoin community as well as paid by that bitcoin business to carry out that audit.

What this really comes down to is that for the list to be of any value, there needs to be a list of Bitcoin businesses who have an independent audit.

What could be wrong with that?

On that note, add Bitcoinica and Mybitcoin to the list.  They both made claims about their adequacy and competence.

Didn't Mt.Gox provide something a while back that stated majority of their coins where covered?

It's a start, but, yes, I agree that we need something more than merely their word.

This is a waste of time.  You're asking owners for a statement saying their stuff is adequately backed up and that's how they get on the list?  No verification or auditing, just that they think their procedures are adequate.  Similar to how people thought it was adequate to go with cheap hosting on vps providers to hold thousands of btc only to have it stolen right out from under them?

I've opt to list companies (so far only one) whose owners have yet publically stated to this community that they have an adequate backup system in place protecting their data and, moreover, their client's funds.

I've devised a simple process so that no company is placed on the bad list--simply state publically that your data is secure. That is all! If any entity is not able to do even that, then they'll have to prove otherwise once they are on the second list.

This 21s video should sum up where I'm currently coming from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkupn-XKxpM

~Bruno~

Thank you Phinnaeus Gage.

Best regards,
Nejc Kodrič
Bitstamp.net

Now we're getting somewhere! Here's their thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/announce-bitcoin-counsel-bitcoin-business-directory-79575

I'm going to PM this post/thread to them.

~Bruno~

Hey Phinnaeus Gage, have you thought about contacting the http://bitcoincounsel.com/ guys and ask them if maybe they'd be willing to add a page for a security standard testimony list or something like that which could be updates once more businesses come forward in this thread?