Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Why to write down your seed? regular InfoSec policies say never write passwords
by
hatshepsut93
on 06/03/2018, 16:37:40 UTC

  • If enough care is taken does the medium of storage matter? A paper is just as easy to steal details from as compared to a notepad file provided there's physical access though I do understand the average user is at much greater risk to malware than forced instrusion
  • Wouldn't a air-gapped machine with an encrypted drive or atleast the file containing the seed secured by a competent passphrase be significantly more secure than something like a paper which can easily be lost or otherwise compromised



One of the main advantages of backing up your seed on paper is that you have a separate physical backup. The problem with hard drives, USB sticks and other digital storages is that they are prone to hardware failures, data corruption, ransomware. You can read some stories on the Internet how people lost big amounts of BTC because their hard drive died.

I think it's quite wise to worry about security and all possible attacks, because those who don't often end up in news articles about the latest Bitcoin robberies as victims, so if you are not comfortable with storing your seeds in plaintext, you can store them on paper in encrypted form. For example, you can generate some random letters on your PC (make sure to use CSPRNG) and use it as one-time pad to encrypt your seed (by hand or on PC). Then you'll have to also backup this one-time pad.

And as for overall security, I think the most dangerous attack is "rubber-hose cryptanalysis" - all encryption becomes worthless if attackers break into your house and force you to reveal your keys. Even sophisticated schemes like key splitting can be defeated by kidnapping someone you care about and demanding ransom in Bitcoin.