Topic: Usb Encryption (Read 492 times)

If lamination poses a problem to anyone with the fear of the words fading, they can have a dual backup in the same location, one written on regular paper and the other written on regular paper but laminated. The laminated one provides the extra security of being protected against tears, wetness and some other hazards and the other backup protects your fear of it fading.

I have laminated documents for several years that have shown no sign of fading in the slightest but it is best to take any precaution possible when it costs nothing to do.

- Jay -

Whatever procedure you apply to secure or encrypt your valuable secrets, lets hope you have every step well documented, unless it's very obvious like for SLIP39, because it's almost certain that after some years you will forget what you did and you likely then will loose access to your secrets. Much more, if something should happen to you, none of your heirs will know how to access those encrypted secrets if there's no precise documentation (which needs to be protected, too, a devilish loop emerges).

You can just create a new wallet with the same seed on the iancoleman page (offline) for example or in a wallet accepting it, but with an extra passphrase and then just transferring your assets over there. The wallet won't be the same of course, but you will just need to store a new passphrase, since you have already back up your seed and it stays the same.
Another strategy allowing to keep the same wallet could be to encrypt your initial entropy with BIP38 like explained here https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/thinking-of-separating-my-holdings-into-two-physical-locations-5437245 or with SLIP39 https://github.com/satoshilabs/slips/blob/master/slip-0039.md
When you will need to use your seed you will have to decipher and to derive it from the encrypted entropy, but your seed will be secured at least. You can get back this entropy from your seed by reversing the first part of the BIP39 algorithm. That is to say by getting the rank of each word of the seed into the BIP39 wordlist, subtracting 1, converting each number in binary radix and removing the part corresponding to the checksum.

I think most folks who prefer to keep their private keys and seed phrases only in digital form, without any old-school "hard copy" backup, might be a bit in the dark about what is really going on inside those memory cells in their SSDs and Flash drives and might not be fully aware of all the risks involved. I even saw someone saying they feel safe because they have copies on two flash drives. That gave me a good laugh!

This belongs to someone that I know, my relative:



The page is clearer here than what you are looking at on the above image. I do not see anything like fading at all.

Check the date on the page that I screenshot. That was 20th May, 1995. That was more than 28 years ago.


You can do another backup every year.

Don't use pen, because you most likely have cheap pen, and these don't last long on paper. Ink fades, especially if exposed to moisture or light. Pencil is more resistant due to it being graphite-based, and you can get much better quality from a $5 pencil than an expensive pen.

I just checked my notebooks from the early days of elementary school. Teacher's text written with pen ink is very readable, but a few parts have started sort of fading. My text, which was written with pencil, is like I wrote it yesterday. That must have been good quality paper, though. (less than 20 years ago)

The main reason to laminate paper is to protect it from flooding, and this risk seems to be increasing lately in many places.
If you're afraid the ink will somehow be influenced by the laminating hot glue, just fold the paper with the ink on the inside. Or write the same words on the paper a few times before folding and laminating.

I have backups on paper, written with pen and they are not showing any sign of fading. The books I wrote some words since many years ago are still intact, I have not seen anything like the words written there to be fading. If I laminate the handwritten words, I do not think it will fade.

The text books I have used more than 20 years ago, I took a look at some just now, they did not fade. If I cut part of the textbook and laminate it, I do not think anything will happen. The laminated paper I was referring to is my NIMC identity which was printed on paper. Somethings like that printed in my country are just done with inferior materials. Someone gave me his contact on a paper with some part handwritten with a pen while others printed. I took a look at the paper just now which I kept near the kind of material used for lamination. The printed part is fading and the ink attaching to the material, but the part written with pen are intact and showing no sign to fade.

Although, the kind of paper used is also important.

Paper back up as been excellent for me. But I do not like to laminate it because of it not to become obvious that the words are important. If anyone sees it convenient, I see no reason not to laminate written words on an exercise book because they do not fade. Having like two other backups.

Those are printed on thermal paper, and indeed you have to copy them if you want to be able to claim product warranty 10 years later. But other than Piper Wallet, normal users won't use that for their seed backup.

I clearly said paper/metal and no I don't trust paper, I trust multiple backup copies with multisig setup in different locations.

I had a bunch of old paper receipts that faded in just few years, so yes printed stuff can certainly fade and it probably all depends on quality of used materials.
Stainless Steel washers are much better option if you want to have longevity and better resistance to various conditions.

I'm still not old enough to answer the best poster, but I'm happy.

I just want to say to the op that it is better to use writing on paper to store important things like seeds rather than using a USB based on my experience which has saved several important files from my work.
The initial intention was to say, write it on paper and then store it in a place that is far from being exposed to water better... Yeah, someone came who made me a little stiff to respond.

Btw, you are right. By providing a plastic wrap, it is safer as long as you don't use wet glue.

Other than thermal paper, I've laminated many things including toner, ink and drawings made by many kinds of pens, markers and pencils. The only thing that caused problems was if there's wet glue in there, other than that everything is in good condition.
I really wonder what conditions you must have to destroy written paper in normal use.

So many people laminate important documents to preserve it, but it is not really advisable to do so and some institutions that i know of in my country now warn against lamination of important certificates or results. The heat and adhesives used in the process of lamination can destroy what's written on the paper, and i believe that's what happened in your situation.
If the book is exposed to moisture, what is written on it is going to fade, but if kept totally dry, it would be intact.
Seed phrase written properly on paper and kept dry and safe is one of the most trusted and recommended backup.

@AprilioMP
Water can also damage a flash drive, just that paper is more vulnerable to water damage.

Fire that may not damage stainless steel seed phrase backup will easily damage a flash drive.

I have laminated a paper before, nothing happened to it, but it faded and some of its ink got attached to the plastic which was used for the lamination after I put it under many heavy books for months or years. But I am still able to read the words. I have heard and read about very old books having faded inks. I have been given a book that is nylon-similar and what are typed on it faded.

Some of the books that I used in first degree school are still intact. If not damage by water or fire, they are still intact. Nothing has happened to the seed phrase that I have written with pen till today. But I do not know if I laminated the paper if something like fading would be seen. But I think the type of paper that are used is very important. The books students are using and jotters are good.

If you can care about USB drive, you care about paper backup. Take good care of it and take a look at it like every year. If you have like three backups in different locations, they can not all fail you.

Passphrase makes backup on a paper to be excellent for me.

If you are not secure with paper, get a stainless steel made for seed phrase backup and backup your seed phrase easily.

It depends on how you do it: This guy posted his private key with $1000 and a 6 character password (with hints!) on Bitcointalk, and nobody cracked it in 2 years.
I agree that the average user shouldn't do it though, most users won't really know what they're doing.

Put it in plastic.

Show me a piece of paper you own that has faded over time. I don't have any.

There's no way I can trust a piece of paper. Storing the essentials isn't always a good option where they can easily be damaged by something like water or faded if left too long.
I mentioned that it is better to store it on paper rather than on a USB as an example, even if you don't think that is a reasonable example.
I also wouldn't store it in paper because it wouldn't be safe at all.

I'm preparing steel according to the number of letters of each word seed.
It makes me feel more at ease in keeping it.

I created this topic, I hope to find an answer
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62814429

You can do it the way LoyceV mentioned, you need 3 cards and made 3 copy each of those cards, this gives us about 9 copies, provided that the similar cards are in different places.

Cloud storage is the worst option, whatever type of encryption you're trying to do.

This is not recommended and it is too risky, storing seed phrases using different methods of obscurity usually makes sense when you're doing it, until you mess up and lock yourself out of your funds, it only gives you a false sense of security. Even if you want to make multiple backups of your divided seed phrase, you'll have too many backups because you have to provide at least two backups of each divided part and keep them all separately.
Uploading your backups to the cloud is not recommended, even if they are encrypted, because it is now online and anything online is prone to hacking, and an attacker can brute force your password. Even if you have a strong password that may take very long or even never for an attacker to brute force, i will consider any backup in the hands of an attacker as being compromised already.
Seed phrase written on a piece of paper can last forever if you store it well, and that's were your opsec comes into play, you wouldn't store it where it will get wet, damaged or torn; and you surely won't store it where another hand can easily see and steal it.

Why not use both? Ideally with different passwords, just in case you forget one of them.

Nothing I've ever written has faded. Paper with ink lasts hundreds of years if stored dry and you don't burn the place down.

To create a seed phrase wallet with a strong passphrase is enough. For the backup, two or three (I prefer three) backups can be done and the seed phrase and passphrase should be backup differently in different locations. If you can not go for paper backup, there are steel/stainless steel backup material that can be bought for it. If it is not a wallet file, I have no reason to backup anything electronically on a device.