The rise of hackers, scam portals, phishing or unscrupulous acquaintances, stalk the savings in Bitcoin. In this sense, James Lopp describes his methodology as Bitcoin developer ensuring the Cryptocurrency against theft and loss.
Jameson Lopp, developer of Bitcoin and one of the most active contributors of the bitcoiner community, made a presentation at the Building on Bitcoin event where he deepened a set of eight "homemade" steps to keep cryptocurrency savings safe from crooks.
Lopp ensures that the first step in locating the savings in cryptocurrencies in a safe place is by creating an encrypted file or hiding said information through the application VeraCrypt, an open source tool that allows encrypting and hiding data easily.
After having made this step and that the data is encrypted securely, the user must proceed to place a password to that generated file. In this sense, Lopp recommends using a password generator, a device that allows generating a random key that is not related to birthdays, names of relatives or personal information; data that is not safe at all.
Regarding the random key, the developer recommends using the methodology of Shamir's Secret Exchange Scheme, which consists of using a cryptographic algorithm to fragment a secret: for example, a backup copy of a 12 or 24 word seed. The result of the procedure implies that several parties share unique fragments of a secret that can only be deciphered if all parties or some of them agree to reconstruct the secret.
These characters can also be distributed among trusted people, such as friends or family, highlights Lopp. However, he recommends that they be given only to those people in whom there is absolute confidence, as well as that they should be redundant keys in case one of the members loses it or can not participate in a password recovery.
Following up on what was previously done, the developer points out that the encrypted file should be copied to a USB disk drive and even to several of these devices, which could be stored in travel bags - Faraday bags - that will allow them to be carried everywhere. .
Among other recommendations, Lopp states that these passwords should be updated every year to prevent unwanted leakage of information. Also, he also advises to write an instruction document with all the steps to recover the data if the person is not present or is not able to release their savings.
Lopp advises to take the instructions with you in case in some case the owner forgets to carry out one of the steps for the recovery of password, since in case of losing any access data the bitcoins could be considered lost. A situation that has happened on several occasions with catastrophic consequences of multi-million dollar savings lost forever.