Topic: Safest Wallet (Read 7665 times)

Could the keys be saved as knocks?
So, when Bitcoin is finally outlawed, we could keep going some form of trade in jail...

You won't if it's worth (no pun intended) to be remembered, lol! 
Anyway, if this day nevertheless comes, I strongly doubt it will ever bother you...

Though your heirs may have a butthurt!

There are ways of recording your keys that are less likely to attract attention.  One would be using musical notation.  A full size piano keyboard contains 88 keys, which is more than enough for Base58 encoding.  And the typical entry-level digital keyboard today is 5 octaves, or 60 keys, which is just enough for Base58 encoding.  But a musical keyboard is not even required.  It can all be done from a computer.

One way (and there are other ways) of mapping a Bitcoin private key to musical notation would be:

It does not use upper case I, upper case O, the number 0, or lower case l
Since a typical uncompressed private key starts with 5, it corresponds nicely to a lower E on the treble clef.

And here is a private key in music notation:

It could be output and recorded in audio format (it is easy to do so), rather than notation, and the note durations could be changed to make it more musical and less mechanical.

Done using MuseScore
http://musescore.org/en

And there are other encoding methods available  

If these type of things make you dizzy, don't try it.

Until the day comes when you forget it somehow!..
The safest wallet for small amounts would be blockchain.
Just make a paper wallet aswell!

The wallet .dat is very much like Del boys butterfly it's designed to keep you on your toe's, one false move or slip of the hand from the uninitiated and pfffft gone for good of course I speak as an idiot who needs an idiot proof wallet. 
This chap here lost 9000btc in 2010 worth over 3 million dollars today https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/lost-large-number-of-bitcoins-782

I think for anyone with a few coins "on hand" it's a bit overkill...

Though who knows how much those coins will be priced for in a few years!

I did not read the whole thread, but saw a couple of joke answers to this. The truly paranoid will avoid Truecrypt because of the weird license. I am not sure how much encryption actually increases your security. If you decide to encrypt your wallets, you still have to store the (high entropy) pass-phrase somewhere.

The first thing to realize is that you are guarding against two equally devastating losses of Bitcoin: theft and losing the private key. Copying the private key and storing it in a remote location will guard against the second risk, but may increase the first risk. If one location gets raided by police or thieves, it may give you time to spend the compromised coins first, but I would not count on that fact. For Bitcoin there is no deposit insurance to replace your coins in the event of fire: so you really should consider geographically separate storage locations.

If you want to back up to more than 2 locations, consider encrypting the wallet, then splitting the key with Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme. If one location is destroyed or compromised (or added), you would regenerate the keys at the remaining locations.

I think it is unrealistic to have a machine that never touched the Internet: but once used as a offline wallet generator, should never touch the Internet again (unless carefully wiped). This implies disconnecting the network, wireless cards, as well as any microphones and sound-cards. If the OS you are using supports autorun, disable it.  I recommend choosing a generic live CD you hope does not have a compromised random number generator. You should try to copy all of the tools you need over to the machine when you are initially setting it up: because introducing code later is always a risk.

When printing your paper wallet, try to choose a printer that is as "dumb" as possible. That means no network (wired or wireless). Hard-drives storing every printed document are also a no-no. For printing my vanity addresses, I used a dot-matrix printer with about 32kB of RAM. That RAM gets cleared when the printer is powered off. Newer computers lack the necessary parallel ports though

I should write a guide on how to set up a "secure computer" and post it on my web-site. My only worry is that the NSA or CSEC will then know how to work around my precautions

PS: Don't trust hardware random number generators: run their output trough AES (in CBC mode) with a long key that you then delete.
Note: "high entropy" means never published. The "common crawl" dataset (Text of the Internet!) is about 81TB and freely available on Amazon Web Services (still need to pay Amazon to process it though).


Those are published on the internet. since most people probably don't have over 5 favorite songs, we are talking 50 bits of entropy, max. Over 64 is better, over 80 should be good, 128 is secure. To guarantee entropy, pass-phrases should be randomly generated.

edit I mis-read that as "first letter of your all time favorite songs." Make that 20 bits of entropy (max, or about 125,000 songs with 32 variations).


This does not protect against forgotten pass-phrase unless the key is simple enough that it does not protect against wallet theft.

That is not true.  Running offline you don't have the blockchain and you are only signing transactions.  It only uses a small amount of memory and old computers are find for cold storage.  I loaded Lubuntu on an old laptop.

Sorry, that's 36^20, not 20^36 - which is still strong enough, assuming characters are picked randomly. If not, I would expect a hack sooner or later. Just a friendly heads-up.

Ok, I thought a programm would pick out words
I'm aware that pass phrasses are safe and good passwords but I think I have a hard time remembering it. I have now made 4 addresses. Some with words that make sense for me. The most important thing will be that it is sufficient long. So at least 20 letters which gives at least 20^36 entropy (I don't use capital letters who does?).

And now I also printed it and put it into a safe of a person which is reliable.(in the case I forget or pass away)

Me?!
It was not my scheme, lol

Are you silly enough to reconnect just then and open a site in non-incognito mode?

It is impossible to say. It is not even known from your post where this port is open (client or server). All online wallets are insecure by definition, period

This. I'm a huge fan of diceware.

EDIT: Just found this little tool that uses diceware to paper/brainwallets:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/nobrainr-a-secure-and-transparent-cold-address-generator-in-1024-bytes-308972

How safe would a on-line wallet be if the only open port was 8333?

Just fancy you begin to recall passwords forgotten in your youth...
Though I doubt Bitcoin will live up to that, so in any case it won't matter

Imagine demetia sets in and you remember that you own coins worth millions, but you cannot recall the pass phrase.

 

But no one will ever suspect you of anything!
Unless they finally get into your head...

Just make sure you don't get into an accident, or get old, or do something to forget it.

Boot to the Head

And still better in your head!!!