Published on: 2011-07-17T08:01:47+00:00
In a discussion thread on protecting Bitcoin wallets from theft, Luke-Jr and Arthur Britto shared their suggestions for securing the wallet.dat file. Luke-Jr proposed two measures for securing the file: overwriting it multiple times with pseudo-random data to secure-delete it, and marking all keys imported from an unencrypted file as "potentially compromised" and not using them for new addresses.Arthur agreed with Luke-Jr's second suggestion but added that writing zeros only once may not be sufficient on modern Unix file systems since the data won't be written in place. He also noted that there is no way for a wallet to be born-encrypted, suggesting that the only way to prevent a leak is to initially build the wallet on a ramdisk or similar platform and then move it over after encrypting it.In an email conversation between Luke-Jr and Arthur, Luke-Jr suggested overwriting the old, unencrypted wallet.dat with pseudo-random data. However, Arthur argued that writing zeros just once should be enough. To support his claim, Arthur provided a link to a tutorial on data sanitization from the University of California, San Diego.To enhance the security of cryptocurrency wallets and prevent potential hacks or thefts, it is suggested to secure-delete an old, unencrypted wallet.dat file by overwriting it multiple times with pseudo-random data. Additionally, all keys imported from an unencrypted file should be marked as "potentially compromised" and not used for new addresses. This means avoiding the use of the old keypool for functions like getnewaddress and change. These measures aim to improve the overall security of Bitcoin wallets and protect against unauthorized access.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T02:07:42.896347+00:00