Bitcoin Stack Exchange
Bitcoin Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [security]

Security issues with the design or implementation of Bitcoin.

Security in Bitcoin encompasses many topics. These include wallet encryption, ECDSA, signing and encryption algorithms used elsewhere, etc.

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Should I trust bitaddress.org?

AFAIK, the generation of the address pairs occurs on your computer but the concept still makes me nervous as it's occurring in the browser and I have to trust the owner of the site, I think.
user1719
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Long term BTC investing

my question is, what is the safest way of buying and holding bitcoin for the long term? And I mean 10-20 years, either a lump sum or through dollar cost averaging, is a paper wallet the answer? Or maybe a cold wallet? I am looking for something…
Dave Stockton
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How did the FBI "seize 260000 BTC"?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-08/bitcoin-1-0-fbi How did the FBI seize 26000 BTC? I thought that all wallets are supposed to be safe. Can you give the technical details?
ihadanny
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How do I know that my bitcoins are real

I have bought some bitcoins off local bitcoins and stored them in an Electra wallet in my computer. Given that I have now paid hard cash, how am I to determine that these are real?
Aerinmund Fagelson
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What is meant by "releasing code tells the hackers what to attack"?

I came across this statement from a SolidCoin developer: Can anyone explain this statement? [06:48] gavinandresen: I came here to ask RealSolid to be responsible and report problems or vulnerabilities to the core bitcoin dev team before…
ripper234
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Is there a way to stop a man-in-the-middle attack when communicating addresses?

Let's say you have person A who wants to pay person B. A common way for B to communicate his/her address to A is by QR code or email or some such non secure method either of which could be substituted for another address in a man-in-the-middle…
T9b
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How would Bitcoin usage be affected within a country that severed its Internet connection?

Clearly this system depends upon data exchange. What happens if national authorities in one or more countries decide there exists a "national emergency", "requiring" the shutdown of the internet in those nations? How then does this system work? …
user2677
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Use Stolen Private Key?

If only my private key were stolen, could it be used? Without knowledge of the corresponding public key or address, can one spend BTC with only the private key? I know you can derive the public key from a private key, but if an address has never…
joe
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Did I just create counterfeit bitcoins?

I had 3 Bitcoins stored on my PC and I had a backup image of my PC. I restored my PC on another computer from the image and I had 3 Bitcoins on that computer also. I spent 5 Bitcoins as a test, and it worked. What just happened?
kirill2485
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Are there any transaction-related artifacts left in the database?

Bitcoin writes to some log files (bitcoin/*.log and bitcoin/database/log.nnnnnn ) Are these (and everything else other than wallet.dat) clear of any information that would allow a forensic investigation to determine which addresses a bitcoin…
Stephen Gornick
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Risk of a certain machines being compromized

Is it possible for a sinister entity to peek into the p2p network of bitcoin and manipulate it in such a way so as to compromise a certain transaction?
Abbas Gadhia
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Is my wallet effected by the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabtilies?

Recently two new vulnerabilities, Meltdown and Spectre were published which lets someone read more memory than they are supposed to be able to. How does this effect my wallets and what can I do to secure my Bitcoin?
Ava Chow
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Should you be able to insure Bitcoin the way banks insure bank accounts?

If insurance for Bitcoin were available for Bitcoin losses what kind of losses would the insurance cover?
Alfred Jordan
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How would the network respond to an ability to crack the private keys?

I'm wondering how future-proof the BTC network security is. Suppose some technological advancement (e.g. quantum computing and/or some ingenious algorithm) were to allow easily cracking the private keys. How would the BTC network respond to such an…
GJ.
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Technical analysis of Blockchain.info security breach

I the news I read this: The firm was forced to make a security disclosure on its blog and on Reddit, admitting that a development error had led to a problem with the generation of private keys. Private keys (effectively the private addresses…
src091
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