Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: vlad1m1r on July 13, 2012, 04:55 pm
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Dear all,
I've been asked a question by an SR user about where to store back ups for your Bitcoin wallet?
I've taken a look at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet#Backup suggests using Wuala over other cloud storage providers as the service doesn't store copies of your encryption keys. I understand it's now possible to encrypt your wallet with a passphrase.
My suggestion for what it was worth was to place the wallet.dat file inside a Truecrypt container, protected with a sufficiently complex password and most importantly a key file (http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=keyfiles) and only then use a cloud based storage service.
The alternative of course is just to back up your wallet on to a thumb drive or DVD but of course this wouldn't be much help if your data was lost or stolen.
Looking forward to hearing all your thoughts.
V.
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I think the truecrypt idea is best. Create a very small container, put your wallet.dat file in there and email it to yourself using yahoo mail or gmail or whatever. If you use a strong password you have nothing to worry about.
Make sure you understand how wallets work thought. Say you have 50BTC in one address, and you backup your wallet.dat file. Then you send 1 BTC to another address, and then your computer crashes. Your backup wallet.dat does NOT protect you in this case. Thats because of the way the way that bitcoin sends coins:
You have 50 coins address "A" and backup your wallet.dat file.
You send 1 coin to address "B"
The other 49 coints in address "A" get sent to addresss "C" that your bitcoin client just created and that you control. Your backup wallet.dat that has the information for address "A" is now worthless.
Whenever coins are sent from an address, ALL coins in the address get sent. Some get sent to who you are trying to send them to, the remaining balance gets sent to a new address that you control. So if you want to back something up, be very careful and verify that you are going about it the correct way.
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You can print out your private key/wallet.dat on a piece of paper and put it in a safe. bitcoin armory will help you do this: http://bitcoinarmory.com/
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You can print out your private key/wallet.dat on a piece of paper and put it in a safe. bitcoin armory will help you do this: http://bitcoinarmory.com/
Thanks, I see the Electrum wallet will allow you to do this too by writing down your private key - it's lightweight and doesn't require you to download the block chain but Bitcoinarmory also sounds promising, I'll have a play with both - thanks again!
V.
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Can someone give some recommendations on best practice for backing up wallet.dat / BTC back up on Mac as well?
It seems neither Electrum or Bitcoinarmoury have functional Mac versions.
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Can someone give some recommendations on best practice for backing up wallet.dat / BTC back up on Mac as well?
It seems neither Electrum or Bitcoinarmoury have functional Mac versions.
According to the Bitcoin Wiki your wallet.dat file is stored in :
~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/
In my opinion it would be sufficient to put it in a Truecrypt container with a sufficiently long password and using a Keyfile(s) and then upload it to a new Gmail account you've created or a cloud service like Wuala but naturally I wanted the opinion of our community before doing so, all thoughts are welcome.
V.
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I've actually had success installing the whole bitcoin installation into a container.
Even better might be full disk encryption.
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Personally, I just encrypt my wallet.dat file with PGP and upload the encrypted wallet to google docs (on gmail).
I find that the best way. The TrueCrypt container is also a good idea which I've used before however, I find it easier to use PGP.