Wallet words are inherently insecure and in fact this entire program is

[fresheneesz]

Are you kidding me guys? Wallet words are the only security option I have with this application? Let me make my thoughts clear:

WALLET WORDS ARE NOT SECURE

https://medium.com/@paullinator/why-a-12-word-mnemonic-is-an-insecure-bitcoin-wallet-backup-d56085da6c8d#.xlnukmuv6

1. Almost no one's going to remember their fucking wallet words, so why even use them vs an encrypted wallet file?
2. Telling someone to write down they key to their wallet on a "PIECE OF PAPER" is NOT secure. If the paper is destroyed, your money's gone. If someone steals the piece of paper, your money's gone. This is not a best practice security move.
3. As the article linked above mentioned, a screen capture virus will easily steal this info right off the bat.
4. Having a second password makes it more likely that you'll be hacked. Why go to the trouble of having wallet words if an attacker can still take your multi-bit wallet and decrypt it with a normal password? Which ever is less secure is your weakest link.
5. You should not be giving people the option to show their password. You already required users to put in their password twice. And what's the point of that option when you're inputting the password to unlock your wallet? What the hell were you guys thinking?
6. Forcing people to manually write down their wallet words is a terrible user experience. Its annoying as fuck. The application doesn't let you copy and paste so the recording is going to be hella error prone.

This application does not allow me to secure my bitcoins in a satisfying way. I want to create a wallet file (encrypted with a password that exists only in my head) that I can store in many locations so that I have backups in case those locations die. I do not want to store my wallet files on a cloud server, because I don't want to have to trust some private company to keep my wallet safe on their servers (which are gold-mine targets for hackers). And I don't want you forcing me to use just one type of security.

My main needs are I want to ensure that I have multiple secure backups of my wallet I can restore anytime in the future. I can't currently do that with multibit.

Not only that, but you don't tell your users almost anything about how your security is done or how they should secure their wallet. What should they do with their piece of paper with their wallet words they're almost definitely going to lose? How do you guys encrypt the backup stored in some random cloud server? How do I restore that backup? How can I be sure its secure when you've told me nothing about that process?

As far as I can tell, this shit is amature hour when it comes to seucrity and backups - which are THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECES of a good bitcoin program. I'm very disappointed with this, cause I hate having to use Armory.

[rupertbg]

This really needs to be addressed. It's embarrassing for MultiBit, and even more embarrassing that they have neglected to even acknowledge the issue you've raised.

[thegranddesign]

I'm new-ish to Bitcoin, but not to development in general. I was interested in this solution, saw the "wallet words" and immediately deleted the app. This is ridiculous.

[PiezPiedPy]

No way I'm going to store my wallet on a cloud, and as for the Wallet Words and a piece of paper WTF!! I am going to stay with classic, HD has gone in the bin minutes after installing.

[krisleech]

I'm no expert. But I like wallet words. The wallet words allow you to recover your wallet should be hard drive die. They are the seed for your private keys. Therefore you don't need to backup anything (unless you want to keep the meta data such as private notes). Write down your wallet words and store them in a physical safe. Writing passwords on paper is not unsafe, it is unsafe it you leave that piece of paper accessible, exactly the same as digital passwords.

[fresheneesz]

@krisleech

Wallet words do no such thing. If you store your wallet words on your harddrive, then you can't recover your wallet with them, can you? What allows you to recover your wallet are backups. You can back up anything, wallet words are not unique there. They are unique in that you can easily write them down on a piece of paper. That's it. Saying "you don't need to back anything up" is absolutely false. Your written down wallet words is a backup.

Writing passwords on paper is indeed unsafe. Security is all about cost vs benefit - the cost of the attack vs the likely benefit of a successful attack. The attack on your wallet words backup in a physical safe is to steal the safe and drop it off a 2 story building. This could be as cheap as $0 while the benefit could be thousands. This isn't security.

If you instead have an encrypted file stored in a flash drive or cd that you put into that safe, the attack becomes incredibly more expensive. Possibly millions of dollars would have to be used to crack your password before you realize your safe was stolen. This is nearly infinitely more secure than a paper wallet words setup.

No offense, but users like you are exactly why we need better default options for backups and security and proper, concise, well-explained explanations in the application. There's nothing wrong with not being a security expert, but its bad for the community if too many non-experts lose their coins or get them stolen because the programs they use failed to inform them properly about safe handling of their money.

[AlbertHirsch]

Take entropy seriously and generate it until you find this tool (by Ian Coleman) tells you "Time To Crack: centuries", then press generate. btw, you can do it offline.

[krisleech]

The attack on your wallet words backup in a physical safe is to steal the safe and drop it off a 2 story building.

I think we have different threat models, I do not own enough bitcoin for this to be a possibility.

encrypted file stored in a flash drive

How are you going to store the decryption password?

"nearly infinitely"

:)