I am somewhat of a nubie. I have been studying crypto currencies and investing in them for about 5 months now and no longer consider myself totally ignorant. Investing in these coins using good judgment and professional advice has been extremely successful and it has now brought me to a new focus of attention. That is successfully securing all of my coins in a way that is REALLY SAFE. As I have been investigating this topic several disturbing facts have come to my attention.
I recently heard John McCafee, a renowned internet security expert, on a you tube video virtually guarantee that there will come a day when ON ONE DAY thousands of crypto wallets will be emptied by hackers. The reason for this is not their encryption strength but the existence of a plethora of key-logging programs that are on all of our computers.
I have come to learn and I believe this as fact that ever since 2014 Hewlett Packard has included a key-logging routine into every computer it has manufactured. I also understand that Apple and Microsoft have built into their computers and software backdoors, key-logger programs and connections between the motherboards and the wireless circuitry to be able to use the computer as spyware. I suppose that none of this should be new information. I also discovered that every hard drive sold in America has it’s own backdoor programming supplied by the manufacturer. We are so corrupt that all these electronics were sold to other nations of the world giving the US the unique opportunity to spy and control computers around the world. Well not surprisingly Russia and China now have laws that prohibiting ALL electronics not manufactured in Russia or China to enter their countries. Edward Snowden made it clear that every smartphone can be used for spying.
So what does this mean for crypto coin security? It means that it’s almost a joke. We investors have been seduced in a honey trap that has yet to spring.
I don’t intend to lose any of my potential earnings by ignoring the above facts.
If you think your password vault is secure, forget it! Even if you are paranoid and add or modify every password in your vault when you actually enter it, it’s NOT secure. How many of us have copied our private keys very carefully onto a piece of paper not realizing our computer was on line. How many times did you press the “print” option that may trigger a key-logging program? I have learned that using a snapshot to capture critical information is more secured than printing it. Google’s 2FA on our smartphones are a joke on us! Even if we all trusted Google…NOT!
Clearly being off line is the only chance of security. But, unless it’s done flawlessly we can loose everything. One must be obsessive and compulsive about our crypto privacy
So here’s what I am going to do:
I believe the ultimate solution is to have a computer that can’t and never has been online running an open sourced Operating System like Ubuntu loaded with our crypto coin wallets. Communicating with our online computer can only be done with a flash drive not even a hard drive. Until I have a similar device in my hand there are several things I plan to do immediately.
2FA on our smartphones is a major flaw. There are special flash drives for sale on Amazon.com that have an independent keypad to enter a private code. Once the code is entered it contains it’s own 2FA. It’s therefore protected from a key-logger program on the computer. If a key-logger copies the 2FA code when it is used it is worthless as it will never be used again. The flash drive also has it’s own encrypted password vault. I’m going to make sure that none of the passwords in that vault will ever function without some standard modification that only I know.
I need to protect my online wallets better. In the interim, I plan to download new online wallets and go OFFLINE to appropriately save the private keys. I will then transfer coins from my existing wallet to my new wallets and a new address.
If I were a computer whiz I would program and market small cheap computers (that never have the capability of ever being on line) and load them with Ubuntu and as many other crypto wallets as practical. I don’t know how to do this but maybe one of my readers has the know how.
I suspect that as we become more informed the need for these secure devices will skyrocket.
I want to learn as much as I can about this topic I believe will explode in popularity as we loose our coins to hackers.
If this product is already available I would very much like to know how to obtain one.
I thinks secure storage of our Crypto coins must become as important than choosing the right coin to invest in.
I welcome any thoughts or opinions. How does one suggest a new Steemit Topic?
Always Saturday