Wallet encryption bug found (IMPORTANT!) - page 3.

Luke-Jr

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Quote from: graingert on November 11, 2011, 07:02:50 PM

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on November 11, 2011, 07:00:42 PM

Quote from: graingert on November 11, 2011, 06:22:08 PM

This issue can be "worked around" by generating a new address and sending all bitcoin there.

That's not quite right-- you need to exhaust all of the keys in your 'key pool' to be safe, so you'd have to ask for 101 new keys.

Part of the fix is marking all of the keys in the keypool as used.

This fix should be back-ported to version 0.4.0

It will be, for bitcoind at least. If someone wants to step up to maintain wxBitcoin, contact me (or join #bitcoin-stable on FreeNode).

graingert

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Quote from: Gavin Andresen on November 11, 2011, 07:00:42 PM

Quote from: graingert on November 11, 2011, 06:22:08 PM

This issue can be "worked around" by generating a new address and sending all bitcoin there.

That's not quite right-- you need to exhaust all of the keys in your 'key pool' to be safe, so you'd have to ask for 101 new keys.

Part of the fix is marking all of the keys in the keypool as used.

This fix should be back-ported to version 0.4.0

Gavin Andresen

legendary

Activity: 1652

Merit: 2301

Chief Scientist

Quote from: graingert on November 11, 2011, 06:22:08 PM

This issue can be "worked around" by generating a new address and sending all bitcoin there.

That's not quite right-- you need to exhaust all of the keys in your 'key pool' to be safe, so you'd have to ask for 101 new keys.

Part of the fix is marking all of the keys in the keypool as used.

graingert

full member

Activity: 227

Merit: 100

Quote from: mndrix on November 11, 2011, 06:29:48 PM

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on November 11, 2011, 04:57:20 PM

constructive suggestions on how to improve the testing and release processes ... are welcome.

How was this particular bug discovered? That might help us formulate strategies for catching similar problems going forward.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/wallet-encryption-issue-51474

P4man

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Just a wild idea; but Google and others give bounties for security bugs that are submitted. Perhaps we could set up a small fund, and pay anyone who finds critical bugs in beta versions?

mndrix

vip

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Quote from: Gavin Andresen on November 11, 2011, 04:57:20 PM

constructive suggestions on how to improve the testing and release processes ... are welcome.

How was this particular bug discovered? That might help us formulate strategies for catching similar problems going forward.

graingert

full member

Activity: 227

Merit: 100

This issue can be "worked around" by generating a new address and sending all bitcoin there.

You should also remember to change all existing static addresses left on the web

coinjedi

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Thanks for the heads-up. We appreciate your hard work.

evoorhees

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Democracy is the original 51% attack

Very much appreciate the notice, Gavin. Thank you!

Gavin Andresen

legendary

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Chief Scientist

A serious bug was been found in the "encrypt wallet" function of bitcoin versions 0.4 and 0.5: private keys may be left unencrypted in the wallet.dat file after encryption.

If your encrypted 0.4 wallet file is stolen, an attacker may be able to recover some or all of your private keys and steal some or all of your bitcoins.

The development team has been working on fixes for bitcoin versions 0.4 and 0.5, but it will take at least a few days to test them thoroughly. Until they are available, you should assume that your 'encrypted' wallets are as vulnerable as an unencrypted wallet, and follow all the best practices for keeping them safe (see here for a list).

It is embarrassing and astonishing that this critical a bug was not caught before the 0.4 release; constructive suggestions on how to improve the testing and release processes that do not assume access to hundreds of thousands of dollars of funds to hire security consultants or QA teams are welcome. Getting sufficient testing of code BEFORE it is released has been a chronic problem for this project.

Topic: Wallet encryption bug found (IMPORTANT!) - page 3. (Read 30665 times)