<p>More and more airports force you to decrypt your data, they will also dump your stuff keeping a backup. This could happen in just about any border you try to cross. It is only safe to expect this to get more common.</p>
<p>The question: how do you keep your wallet.dat file safe?</p>
<p>-Full disk encryption: A big problem since you are prompted with a password right at the start when you turn the laptop on, no way out.</p>
<p>-Hiding it in some obscure file somewhere: Forensics have tools to find headers that match encrypted volumes made by popular encryption programs, so I don't think it would fly. Also realize that they do data dumps so your stuff would be there for them to find eventually.</p>
<p>-Putting your encrypted wallet file somewhere on the net: Where, and why would you trust this anyway? you don't control the servers. If you have to pay for the service, you have already linked yourself to the file. If it's free, you still can't trust these services, for instance these famous &quot;end to end encryption email services&quot;. Who says they cannot access the data or that a database leak wouldn't happen? Plus the general not so nice feel of knowing a backup of your file is somewhere and even temporarily, once you delete it you don't really know if it was really deleted. Any encrypted file now is like a treasure for crackers since Bitcoin is a thing. Of course if we assume Bitcoin private keys are safe then a strong 64 character password should be impossible to bruteforce, but you must be able to remember this password on your mind, and im not so sure that you can generate a 64 character password strong enough that you can remember it while being safe from bruteforce.</p>
<p>Anyway, im looking for your ideas. Also because I only trust Bitcoin Core I do not store coins in Electrum so the &quot;12 character password seed&quot; is not a thing. HW wallets are just big signs that say &quot;look, this dude has coins there&quot; so it's pretty pointless. Im really out of ideas in how to try to move around borders while storing coins in the Core wallet format so please let me know your ideas. Cheers.</p>

<bitcoin-core><security><wallet-recovery><wallet-security>
Crossing borders: security scheme ideas
walamagic
# Crossing borders: security scheme ideas

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-07-27)

More and more airports force you to decrypt your data, they will also dump your stuff keeping a backup. This could happen in just about any border you try to cross. It is only safe to expect this to get more common.

The question: how do you keep your wallet.dat file safe?

-Full disk encryption: A big problem since you are prompted with a password right at the start when you turn the laptop on, no way out.

-Hiding it in some obscure file somewhere: Forensics have tools to find headers that match encrypted volumes made by popular encryption programs, so I don't think it would fly. Also realize that they do data dumps so your stuff would be there for them to find eventually.

-Putting your encrypted wallet file somewhere on the net: Where, and why would you trust this anyway? you don't control the servers. If you have to pay for the service, you have already linked yourself to the file. If it's free, you still can't trust these services, for instance these famous "end to end encryption email services". Who says they cannot access the data or that a database leak wouldn't happen? Plus the general not so nice feel of knowing a backup of your file is somewhere and even temporarily, once you delete it you don't really know if it was really deleted. Any encrypted file now is like a treasure for crackers since Bitcoin is a thing. Of course if we assume Bitcoin private keys are safe then a strong 64 character password should be impossible to bruteforce, but you must be able to remember this password on your mind, and im not so sure that you can generate a 64 character password strong enough that you can remember it while being safe from bruteforce.

Anyway, im looking for your ideas. Also because I only trust Bitcoin Core I do not store coins in Electrum so the "12 character password seed" is not a thing. HW wallets are just big signs that say "look, this dude has coins there" so it's pretty pointless. Im really out of ideas in how to try to move around borders while storing coins in the Core wallet format so please let me know your ideas. Cheers.

**Tags:** bitcoin-core, security, wallet-recovery, wallet-security


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## 0 answers

