Topic: Where do you store your electrum 12 word phrase? (Read 1568 times)

what physical locations are you guys putting the seeds into?  So you break it into 2 parts?  So whether its electrum or ledger wallet which has 24 or 25, you do the same?  Now what happens if you computer with electrum gets stolen.  And also 1 part of the seed in your apartment/house get stolen.  The other part let say you put in a bank safety deposit box.  First off, is that even safe?  That seems like a really bad idea as i heard of safety deposit box in banks getting broken into/drilled etc.  Then what happens then?  Same as if your nano ledger wallet gets stolen.  Half of the seed got stolen, the other half its somewhere else.  If you have no online backup, then what do you do here?  The other thing i thought was this.  If you keep it in keepass and put a copy of it online such as dropbox or google drive... well as long as you remember your dropbox/google drive password and keepass, that is all that is needed.  Don't you guys agree?  The other thing might be... how about create 2 different keepass files?  Where half the seed is on one keepass file... the other is on another file?  And each one is on 2 different dropbox/google drive email?  That way if somehow your dropbox/google drive account got hacked... well they still need the password for keepass. And if they somehow get it... well they still need to hack your other dropbox/google drive account and also hack the other keepass file.  So basically create different passwords for your different dropbox/google and for each keepass file.  Yes you would have to remember a few more passwords.  But wouldn't this probably be the safest way to store a password on keepass and keep an online backup?


12 word phrase, i could definitely see how people could remember that.  24 word or 25 word seed is basically impossible i think.


Because if you dont keep a copy of it online, well there is always a chance it physically could get destroyed/stolen.  So thoughts on that?  I mean there has to be lot of cases where people either did not wrote down their 12 word phrase or... they wrote it down but no idea where it is etc and they cannot access it anymore. 

Don't worry, just put a not in large capital letters next to these words saying "THIS IS NOT ELECTRUM SEED"

Not if your hacker are avid cyptocurrency user, which most hacker are
For sake of security I hope you were joking, or at least you've put 2FA on your Google account

Just make it simple, memorize it like the good old days
Your brain can't get hacked and have it seed stolen


It's actually doable with a few hours of memorizing, either forcefully or by making your own little stories

well, i'm not sure that gmail mail is safe enough to store a seed. Yes, maybe not everyone will associate that title to a seed, but, i don't know...
i fell not safe at your place

Keeping things really simple, if you break it into two 6 word phrases, then put them in separate places. Be sure they don't say what they are. Like they don't say "Key to bitcoins."

That's pretty secure, if the two places are places you will always have access to. I am talking physical locations nothing on a computer.

If someone found one of the 6 word phrases, suspected it was half. key, they would have to brute force 2*(2000^6) the other one. Basically that's hopeless. That's assuming there is a 2000 word list that the words are picked from.

As a backup to this, a person could commit to memory two mnemonic phrases, one for each of the six words.

So if you had to choose, its better to type it in on keepass as opposed to lastpass right? 


So if you upload your keepass or lastpass file on dropbox... well you still need to get the password of keepass or lastpass in order to access it.  So wouldn't that be the best way so that you would have a keepass or lastpass file backup on the internet such as dropbox in case you dont have your copy on your computer or usb etc?


Like the other mentioned... people say write your word on a seed and keep the paper safe.  Where do you keep this paper then?  Do you keep it in a safe?  Do you keep it in a safe in the bank?  Do you keep it in a drawer in your home?  Do you have the paper broken in 2 or more parts that way the one piece of paper doesn't have all the word?  The thing is someone mentioned what if there is a fire.  Well if there is, that means your computer and everything might be gone.  The other thing is what if someone breaks in your apartment or something like that and then takes your paper.  Or maybe they come and just take a picture of your seed and then leave etc.


So if this is the case, isn't what i mentioned a while back probably the best idea to do would be just type your phrase on keepass or lastpass and then upload it on dropbox?  Because that way, the person would need to not only hack your dropbox account, but they would the password to your keepass or lastpass etc.  That way you dont have to worry about your piece of paper?  Also even if you put it in a safe in a bank, there has been cases where safes have gotten destroyed in banks etc. 


Thoughts on this?  I really don't think having the entire phrase written down on a single piece of paper is good idea.  I could understand if you have it broken down in say 2 or 3 pieces etc though.  But in any case, shouldn't you have a copy of the seed online somewhere in keepass or lastpass?  That way you dont have to think about the physical piece of paper?

At the moment, pretty much every wallet that utilises seed mnemonics are using the same 2048 words as specified in the BIP39: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/bip-0039-wordlists.md

It is possible to use different languages, but pretty much every wallet I've seen uses English by default. Not sure if that is related to my system settings or the way the wallets work.


Testing for 2 missing words is pretty trivial... It's only 2048*2048 = 4,194,304 combinations...

I've written a python script which allows testing for this to help another user who was missing a word... The script found the right word in a matter of minutes... And that was without knowing the location of the missing word in a 24 word mnemonic

Depends. Are you more worried about your house burning down or about someone breaking in and stealing your seed?


Its 2048 different words[1].


The security of the seed for 12 words is 128 bit IIRC, which is roughly the same as a bitcoin private key. Its possible to have 3 identical words at the same position, but you still need to match the other 9 to have the same seed. To have the same seed is sufficiently unlikely.


IIRC no other wallet uses the same words.


Testing for 2 missing seed words and positions would not take long enough for it to be still secure. If you think you have lost 10 of your 12 seed words you should move to a new wallet with a new seed.


Its exactly that. Test one seed, derive the first x private keys and adresses, check for (historic) balance, repeat until all combinations have been tried.


You dont need the wallet software for that and I doubt anyone would want to try 2048 missing words for 12 positions, considering only 1 word and its position is unknown. Youd write a script or use an existing one. E.g. btcrecover has some capabilities to check for wrong seed words. It doesnt check against a balance, you need to know an address. For someone malicious it would be relativly easy to change this though.


Gut feeling here, 9 words would be feasible depending on the amount to recover and how much of it you want to invest it computers to recover it. One or two words should be possible on home machines given some time.


Not for blockchain no. The algorithms used are mostly the same. It would be possible to design a seed derivation algorithm that is slow and thus more difficult to brute force, but I dont know if anyone has done something like that.


Electrum has several forks for alt coins, e.g. LTC, Doge(?) and BCH (if you consider it an alt).

[1] https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/lib/wordlist/english.txt

Hey all.  Would you say keeping this seed in your apartment/house is safe at all? 


The other thing is if you do this, wouldn't it make sense to keep a few phrases in one area, and the other in another area etc?


The other thing is how many words are there?  Thus its a 12 word phrase but how many words are there?  The other thing im wondering is this.


Let just say your 12 word phrase is ... and im making this 12 word phrase up right now


dog cat ball cow mouse horse tv sofa bed table chair floor



So if this was a real 12 word phrase and you enter it on any computer, well you would open the wallet and have access to whatever bitcoin is in the wallet.  But let say you rearrange these words around etc.  Would that be possible for it to be a possible 12 word phrase for someone else?  The thing is how many combinations are there total?  Because couldn't one persons 12 word phrase possibly have say 3 words the same as another user?  Or is this not possible? 


Do any of the 12 word phrase from electrum or blockchain use the same words?


What if you know say the first 10 words of the 12 word phrase.  Or if someone knows the first 10 words of the 12 word phrase.  What are the chances that they could figure out the last 2 words of your wallet and have access to it?  I heard someone mentioning brute force but not sure what that is exactly except i heard its like trial and error.  But wouldn't someone need to enter each word that is not known etc?  The other thing is after many tries, would you be allowed to make more tries etc?  Like imagine you try to log into an email account.  After many attempts, you wont be able to log in for a while etc.


How many words out of the 12 words would you say if someone had access to it or if someone forgot their electrum password, they can still recover their wallet etc?  Does this differ if its blockchain or any altcoin wallet?  Does anyone know if altcoins have 12 word phrases and if they do, do those words all come from the electrum words etc?

oh god i was leaked my way to save electrum seed, i thinks is time to discover stupid way to save seed 

But now we know it! 

3...2...1... and it's gone!
    

ha ha ha may be this a stupid things but not many people know that it is electrum seed 

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. 

 i just save my seed on keep.google.com like a TITLE so i create 12 title if someone ask its save i think yeah because only me know my gmail account 

you are too hard on yourself about saving your seed in my opinion.
you can in fact simply print it on a piece of paper and laminate that paper or not and be safe for many years just holding that.
so although what you are doing is good but remember that your password that you use on your keypass should also be strong in other words if you use something like "123" as your keypass password it would be as if you never use it.

and then you will again have the same problem with memorizing your strong keypass password!

The thing with keepass is that you still need to remember a password or you still not to write down a password.

If you make it easy to remember, it is likely easy to crack as well. If someone targets you they could then get into your keepass safe.

If you write it down on paper, you have the same issue as writing down the seed on paper.

Using a password manager to create different passwords for all websites is good to do though. Nobody will ever be able to crack your accounts because one website stored your password unsafely.

Okay but don't you guys say the best method of this is typing your 12 word phrase in keepass?


Thus use keepass as your password program.  So you have a copy of it on your computer.  Then make a copy of it on an external hard drive so that makes it 2 copies you have.  Then make a copy of it online using dropbox or google drive or icloud etc.  Thus that way you have 3 copies of keepass in case anything happens to it.  Any which of these programs do you recommend the most?  Dropbox, google drive or icloud for storing keepass?



So the only thing is you need to make sure you remember your password for your keepass and either your dropbox/google drive or icloud. 



That way, when you open keepass whether its on your computer or online storage site, and since you only have the password to it, thus your 12 word phrase is in it... that is best idea?



That way you dont have to remember the 12 word phrase or put it anywhere eetc?

Storing it in a safe may protect (or actually make it a target, if they think there are other valuables in there and accidentally take your seed) you from thiefs, it does not protect your from the elements.

Sever water damage or a fire will very likely destroy the contents of the safe. Make sure that it is not your only backup.

A safe at your bank would be a good choice but this is pretty expensive.

You could buy a small safe and put it somewhere in your house or buy one of those "hidden" safes (looks like a book or a spray can), those are quite inexpensive and gives you good protection!

It was ofcourse completely over simplified purely for the sake of expalanation. The thing is, those strange words in the seed may actually make it easy as well. The more extreme you make the words interact in your memory palace, the easier it is to remember.

Also, I wouldn't recommend this as the sole storage place of the seed, especially as a novice, but it is possible and extremely easy for 12 words. When I first tried it I had to remember 20 random words in the training and I still know half of them 10 years later without any revisiting the sequence in my mind. Imagine how easy 12 words is after some practice and revisiting it every few weeks.