Infosec Basics: How to Keep Your Bitcoin Seed Phrase Safe

There is one unavoidable fact about self-storing Bitcoin: The responsibility lies with you. You are responsible for your funds, you are responsible for keeping them safe, you are responsible for everything. This may be a difficult prospect, but there are simple ways to approach self-custody.

Securing Bitcoin can be thought of as similar to building a house. First you lay the foundation, then build a frame on top of it, and from there you fill in the walls, insulation, utilities, etc. You’ll need to complete the following for each part of your home you want to add. Otherwise, your entire home will become unsafe and unstable.

When it comes to Bitcoin security, the seed phrase is the foundation of security. This is the most important and potentially weakest point in security. Just as the foundation of your house affects its stability, your seed phrase affects the security of your wallet.

So how do you store your seed phrase securely? Here are some key considerations to keep in mind when figuring out how to secure your seed phrase:

sharing is bad

Your seed phrase is your money. All private keys, all addresses, and all Bitcoin accounts in your wallet needed to authorize spending: all of these pieces are generated from the seed phrase. Anyone with access to your seed phrase will have access to all funds stored in that wallet. Therefore, it is essential to create and obtain a backup of this seed phrase.

If something goes wrong with the device you installed your hardware wallet or software wallet on, your only hope is to back up your seed phrase. If you lose that seed phrase backup, your money is gone. When you self-storage your funds, you have two ways to access them: through the wallet you use or by backing up your seed phrase. Your Bitcoin wallet protects a copy of your keys on that device, but does not help protect your seed phrase backup.

no one You must be granted access to your seed phrase. It may sound cold and callous, but I can’t be sure they will handle it responsibly. They can still lose a copy of your seed phrase or leave it untouched without any malicious intent.

So rule 1 is: Do not share your seed phrase with anyone. In any situation, exceptions to this rule should be thought long and carefully before breaking them. Ultimately, trusting too much can make Bitcoin dangerous.

the computer is not your friend

It is very important not to record your seed phrase in digital format. Computers are incredibly complex machines and are prone to numerous security issues. People’s devices are hacked on a regular basis. If you store a copy of your seed phrase digitally, you may be putting yourself at risk. This means your laptop or smartphone is vulnerable to malware and spyware. Once a hacker has access to your device, they can read your files and extract seed phrases from any type of digital storage they have access to. For this reason, you should avoid storing your seed phrases digitally.

This especially applies when storing anything on remote digital services, such as cloud storage providers. If your email account is compromised, hackers can use your credentials to log into cloud storage services and access your seed phrase.

Under no circumstances should you:

• Save your seed phrase to a cloud storage site such as iCloud or Google Drive.
• Take pictures with your cell phone or other digital camera.
• Send via digital media such as email or text message.
• Please enter it somewhere other than the Bitcoin wallet you are using.
• Process in front of any camera.
• Try speaking loudly near the microphone.

The only copy of your seed phrase must be physical and completely isolated from the Internet.

This is why it is also not recommended to store significant amounts of Bitcoin in a software wallet on your computer or phone. Simply put, any device connected to the internet is vulnerable to hackers. So, if you want to keep your Bitcoin safe, you should invest in a hardware wallet.

Use durable seed phrase backups

When backing up your seed phrase, one important decision stands out. What will you use it for? This may seem like a silly question if you’re new to this space, but unless you stop using Bitcoin, you’ll need to secure seed phrases for the rest of your life.

Durability is incredibly important. You can write your seed phrase on a piece of paper and put it in a drawer, but how long will it stay safe? Paper is flammable and therefore deteriorates. Spilling water can smudge the ink and make your backups unreadable. Paper is not suitable for long-term storage.

Metal is a much better option and many products on the market are designed to store the seed phrase in metal. Some solutions use small individual metal tiles with lettering on them, which you can slide into the frame and secure in place. Record words like BillFodl.

Metal tile backups are reusable, so as you create and move new wallets over time, you can reuse the same backup kit for new seed phrases. If necessary, you can also easily “destroy” the backup by removing the tile. If you’re moving to a place where you can’t take your backup because of the risk of someone else finding it (for example, if you’re passing through an airport), you may not want to leave your backup behind.

Other metal backings use an etching tool to scratch or engrave words directly into a flat metal surface, providing greater protection against threats such as fire. Although this is very secure, it is extremely difficult to destroy a copy of the seed text engraved on the metal. To ensure destruction, the entire surface of the metal plate must be ground until no trace of the words remains.

Finally, there are capsule-based solutions. This product uses small steel tiles with letters on them, but rather than being pushed into a flat frame, they are loaded into steel tubes around a pole and held in place. This can provide the benefit of reusability while preventing letter tiles from scattering or falling out due to fire warping.

When choosing between metal tile and sheet metal, carefully weigh the pros and cons of both. But remember: Use metal. Don’t trust your Bitcoin to a flimsy piece of paper.

physical safety

Now that you’ve set up how to store your seed phrases, where should you store them? While it’s important to store your seed phrases in sturdy materials, it’s also important to store them in places that are physically difficult to access. It should be stored in a lockable place, such as a safe or lock box. Safes are better than lock boxes because they are larger and physically harder to transport. A wall mounted safe is much better. To remove the safe you must destroy the wall.

If you don’t have a safe or lock box, keep your seed phrase out of sight. Place it in a filing cabinet or desk drawer in a room where no one else can access it. The important part is making sure that no one else can access it, no matter where it is.

Backup Splitting

There may not be a single place where you can safely store your backup seed phrases. There are two options for maintaining a secure backup of your seed phrases without having to keep them in one location. If you’re considering splitting your seed phrase backups, follow the well-known protocol or don’t do it at all.

Split your backup yourself

Seed XOR is one mechanism. A process that allows you to take an existing seed phrase and split it into two (or more) new seed phrases using a mathematical process. These new seed phrases are fully valid and can be recombined later to produce the original seed phrase. This allows you to break your seed phrase into pieces and store them in multiple locations. that very But the important thing to keep in mind is that you must have 100% split seed phrases. If you lose even one, the original seed phrase cannot be recreated. The biggest advantage of XORing is that you can do it by hand.

Sharing Shamir’s Secret

The second is Shamir Secret Sharing. Seed XORing, like SSS, breaks the seed phrase into pieces, but uses a very different mathematical process to do so. Unlike seed XORing, Shamir sharing allows recovering the original seed phrase with less than 100% sharing. You can set it up like multi-signature. This means that you can regenerate your seed phrase as long as you have 3/5 backup shares. The only downside is that only certain wallets support using Shamir and it cannot be done manually.

Under no circumstances should you manually split seed phrases. If it doesn’t follow a secure and widely researched protocol like Seed XOR or Shamir Secret Sharing, don’t consider it. Simply splitting the seed phrase into multiple pieces could significantly reduce the security of Bitcoin. It’s statistically impossible to guess someone’s seed phrase by guessing 12 to 24 words at random, but what if someone has 4 of those words? Or 6 of those words? Guessing the rest of the seed phrase starts to get really practical.

If you use Ledger, another alternative is the Ledger Recover service. This optional paid service uses a secret sharing variant of Shamir called Pedersen Verifying Secret Sharing (PVSS). This gives you back-up access to your wallet without a seed phrase after verifying your identity with a government-issued ID.

social recovery

If you don’t have a safe place to store your seed phrase backup, there is an alternative solution. Wallets and services like Unchained, Casa, and Nunchuck Wallet offer multi-signature solutions that allow a third party to hold one of your keys. For example, if you have 2/3 multi-signature, you can have one key. This can help you move your funds to a new wallet, as long as you don’t lose both keys you keep.

Keep it secret and keep it safe

Ultimately, it is your responsibility to secure your Bitcoin. It’s something you need to take seriously and put in the right amount of effort to maintain. If you don’t take it seriously, no one will come and save you. As Gandalf warned Bilbo in The Lord of the Rings, “Keep it secret and keep it safe.”

It is your job as a Bitcoin user to hide your seed phrase from others and keep it safe from those who want to take it. The simple advice in this article covers most of what you need to do to achieve this.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Write down your seed phrase on a durable medium, such as metal, and keep it physically safe from prying eyes and thieving hands. Lock it in a safe or a room that others don’t access often. Check it regularly. That’s all you have to do.

Don’t overthink things in your head, keep it simple and your Bitcoin will be safe.