Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: BenCousins on June 20, 2012, 03:05 pm
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OK, so im not overly familiar with BTC and how the system works so forgive me for being ignorant. At the moment i just purchase BTC via cash deposit and get it deposited straight into my SR account and then spend etc. Ive installed a BTC wallet on my computer but im wondering what happens if say:
my harddrive/computer/OS gets fucked and i need to completely reformatt losing everything?
computer gets stolen?
computer gets infected with spyware/keylogger? (probably fucked in general if this happens)
LE get hold of my computer?
or any other sort of event that would compromise my bitcoins as my understanding my BTC are installed in my wallet on my computer? inst it safer to have it in an online/cloud wallet?
can anyone explain how you get around this. Once again i apologize if im being ignorant
Ben
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Number one, I hope you're making the bitcoin client go through Tor, if you're not, you're leaving a nice trail of breadcrumbs leading right to your door.
Number two, you should never, never send bitcoins to SR account without first washing them, as by using for example bitcoin fog. At'sa no,no, boys and girls.
MopckFrog
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Number one, I hope you're making the bitcoin client go through Tor, if you're not, you're leaving a nice trail of breadcrumbs leading right to your door.
Number two, you should never, never send bitcoins to SR account without first washing them, as by using for example bitcoin fog. At'sa no,no, boys and girls.
MopckFrog
Okay, I'll open myself up to ridicule to admitting I have dozens of transactions and don't understand this.
If I buy bitcoins with cash, completely anonymously, how can it hurt to have them deposited directly to my SR account?
n.b. I am confident that the cost/benefit analysis (and yes, LE do that) would not extend to reviewing bank security cam footage and then trying to track down a nondescript/no priors mid-30s female for a 3g order.
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Okay, I'll open myself up to ridicule to admitting I have dozens of transactions and don't understand this.
If I buy bitcoins with cash, completely anonymously, how can it hurt to have them deposited directly to my SR account?
n.b. I am confident that the cost/benefit analysis (and yes, LE do that) would not extend to reviewing bank security cam footage and then trying to track down a nondescript/no priors mid-30s female for a 3g order.
You're quite right 'Lass, cash deposits do take the heat away from your bank account, but there is a chance that LE/Security Services in your country are illegally monitoring internet traffic for Bitcoin activity (remember those questionable privacy invasion laws currently being debated in the United Kingdom?). It would be a very simple way of identifying SR users, as a high proportion of Bitcoin users are probably also involved in Silk Road one way or another. After they've identified you as a Bitcoin user, they could just search your post anyway and pretend it was an "anonymous tip-off" of some kind.
The people behind the great drug war scam will stop at nothing to criminalize users, even if it involves breaking the law to do so. They really hate us, you know
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I had the understanding that BTC were as anonymous as the method you use to buy them and theres not much more anonymous then cash. I do however agree that for extra safety i should be washing them.
How do i configure it to run through Tor?
can anyone answer my other questions?
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Ben
2 words: wallet backup
There are various ways of achieving this, the most effective easily being the "Brain Wallet". Check out the thread Vl4d1m1r made on brain wallets, it's a fucking revelation
Once you've done this, and as long as you have a strong password encrypting the wallet, no man or machine can take your money away from you either deliberately or by accident. Oh, and don't forget the phrase you used to create the wallet in the first place (you won't if there's alot of money in it, lol). And I guess the outlying caveat is that you're depending on the valid maintenance of the Bitcoin blockchain to make sure your money doesn't disappear.
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Ben
2 words: wallet backup
There are various ways of achieving this, the most effective easily being the "Brain Wallet". Check out the thread Vl4d1m1r made on brain wallets, it's a fucking revelation
Once you've done this, and as long as you have a strong password encrypting the wallet, no man or machine can take your money away from you either deliberately or by accident. Oh, and don't forget the phrase you used to create the wallet in the first place (you won't if there's alot of money in it, lol). And I guess the outlying caveat is that you're depending on the valid maintenance of the Bitcoin blockchain to make sure your money doesn't disappear.
link?
so i got one person saying i lose everything and one person saying i cant lose nothing?
how do i back it up?
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so should i back it up onto some sort of cloud or is that a bad idea?
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You guys should look at blockchain explorer and try and pinpoint someones IP that sent or received BTC... "not easy"
Why do you think your deposit addy changes after each deposit?
I have never washed my coins, You should never deposit directly in to your SR account... Use an online wallet or bitcoin-qt client...
if your buying your coins with cash and using TOR your fine.... quit being paranoid.
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should it be backed up everytime coins are deposited in there?
what happens to coins if they do just dissapear into the ether? are they re-mined or gone for all eternity meaning there will be less then 21million eventually in existance?
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I had the understanding that BTC were as anonymous as the method you use to buy them and theres not much more anonymous then cash. I do however agree that for extra safety i should be washing them.
How do i configure it to run through Tor?
can anyone answer my other questions?
Go to settings>options>settings>click connect through Socks4 Proxy and fill in 127.0.0.1 in proxy IP and probably 9050 in Port. It depends what port your vidalia is running, usually it's 9051. If so, then write 9050 in bitcoin client.
MockFrog
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but if you use bitcoin-qt to send money, you will need a fresh backup every time you do send coins somewhere. this is because bitcoin-qt will generate new internal addresses which aren't shown in the gui and send money to them.
and yes the coins are simply lost forever. they will still exist but cannot be transferred anywhere.
Where do you get this information? I see the addresses in my bitcoin client. Thise are the only addresses I have, and any new ones I myself generate. What would be the use of it generating a new address unbeknownst to me? How would I ever be able to access it? I do not think you are correct.
Someone go ahead and prove me wrong, but if not, I say that's not right.
MockFrog
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OK, I had to look up pywallet to see what that is. It's software to import wallet data or something like that. Isn't that method you just described incredibly dangerous, I mean from the viewpoint of security? I don't think I'd want any of my wallet data floating around in an online wallet. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the thing, but whoa!
MockFrog
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thanks MockFrog and Shannon!
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Ben
If you're really concerned about losing your wallet, then as I say, look up the Brain Wallet thread. It's much more reliable than Instawallet and so on, because the only person you have to trust is yourself. Not the case with online wallets.
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Ben
If you're really concerned about losing your wallet, then as I say, look up the Brain Wallet thread. It's much more reliable than Instawallet and so on, because the only person you have to trust is yourself. Not the case with online wallets.
Can you link me if possible? I tried searching and nothing came up
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http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=23792.msg
It's the top result when you search "Brain Wallet", incidentally.
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Tried searching and the only thing that came up was this thread
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http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=23792.msg
It's the top result when you search "Brain Wallet", incidentally.
Thanks, Abracadaver.
MockFrog
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correct me if im wrong, but isnt that the same as having an online/cloud wallet. If not care to explain how?
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Not quite.
If you use an online wallet, some encoded version of your private key MUST be communicated to the wallet service provider, the service couldn't operate otherwise. This is a security risk IMO, albeit a very small one (a hashed or salted key would require a strongly motivated attacker to devote the resources into cracking it, i.e. you'd need to have lots of money in the wallet and the attacker would have to know which out of 1000's of hashed keys was yours)
If you follow Vl4d1m1r's instructions, but instead of importing the private key into an online wallet, import it into a Bitcoin client on your machine instead, you will get all the benefits of Brain Wallets, and none of the drawbacks (as long as you can hide your real IP when using the wallet, of course)
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i would still need to back this up correct?If my machine was wiped out or compromised i would still lose everything?
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Number one, I hope you're making the bitcoin client go through Tor, if you're not, you're leaving a nice trail of breadcrumbs leading right to your door.
Number two, you should never, never send bitcoins to SR account without first washing them, as by using for example bitcoin fog. At'sa no,no, boys and girls.
MopckFrog
it says on the Bitcoin forums not to run it through tor as it slow, not anymore anonymous(as BTC is already anonymous) and opens you up to an evil exit node watching?
thoughts?
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I still cant seem to workout how to use my wallet. i tried generating and addresse and then withdrawing BTC from SR to it but they appear to have dissapeared into the ether
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Not quite.
If you use an online wallet, some encoded version of your private key MUST be communicated to the wallet service provider, the service couldn't operate otherwise. This is a security risk IMO, albeit a very small one (a hashed or salted key would require a strongly motivated attacker to devote the resources into cracking it, i.e. you'd need to have lots of money in the wallet and the attacker would have to know which out of 1000's of hashed keys was yours)
If you follow Vl4d1m1r's instructions, but instead of importing the private key into an online wallet, import it into a Bitcoin client on your machine instead, you will get all the benefits of Brain Wallets, and none of the drawbacks (as long as you can hide your real IP when using the wallet, of course)
A much better suggestion AbraCadaver many thanks - I did think about this but didn't want to overcomplicate the instructions by adding steps to download and install the Bitcoin client. I will do a "further to" on how to do this if anyone's interested.
All the best,
V.
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Not quite.
If you use an online wallet, some encoded version of your private key MUST be communicated to the wallet service provider, the service couldn't operate otherwise. This is a security risk IMO, albeit a very small one (a hashed or salted key would require a strongly motivated attacker to devote the resources into cracking it, i.e. you'd need to have lots of money in the wallet and the attacker would have to know which out of 1000's of hashed keys was yours)
If you follow Vl4d1m1r's instructions, but instead of importing the private key into an online wallet, import it into a Bitcoin client on your machine instead, you will get all the benefits of Brain Wallets, and none of the drawbacks (as long as you can hide your real IP when using the wallet, of course)
A much better suggestion AbraCadaver many thanks - I did think about this but didn't want to overcomplicate the instructions by adding steps to download and install the Bitcoin client. I will do a "further to" on how to do this if anyone's interested.
All the best,
V.
Is hiding my IP as simple as checking that box in the options of my Bitcoin client that "torifys" it or is there more to it?
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Not quite.
If you use an online wallet, some encoded version of your private key MUST be communicated to the wallet service provider, the service couldn't operate otherwise. This is a security risk IMO, albeit a very small one (a hashed or salted key would require a strongly motivated attacker to devote the resources into cracking it, i.e. you'd need to have lots of money in the wallet and the attacker would have to know which out of 1000's of hashed keys was yours)
If you follow Vl4d1m1r's instructions, but instead of importing the private key into an online wallet, import it into a Bitcoin client on your machine instead, you will get all the benefits of Brain Wallets, and none of the drawbacks (as long as you can hide your real IP when using the wallet, of course)
A much better suggestion AbraCadaver many thanks - I did think about this but didn't want to overcomplicate the instructions by adding steps to download and install the Bitcoin client. I will do a "further to" on how to do this if anyone's interested.
All the best,
V.
Is hiding my IP as simple as checking that box in the options of my Bitcoin client that "torifys" it or is there more to it?
No, I think that's it!
V.
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haha and the level of paranoia on these forums is amazing! Still trying to get my head around all the technical jargon in this thread and the other one
thanks anyway shannon and vlad