Altcoins Talks - Cryptocurrency Forum

Learning & News => For Beginners => Basic Questions about Cryptos => Topic started by: borderfox on November 06, 2018, 05:14:46 AM

Title: Bootable usb for crypto??
Post by: borderfox on November 06, 2018, 05:14:46 AM

I've not delved into the more exotic coins in terms of purchase but looking at doing so now.  I've used a hardware wallet up until now but this won't support the lesser known coins. 

I don't want to buy a separate laptop to use for that purpose.  Can I use a bootable usb drive?  Presumably whatever happens within that "OS" has nothing to do with anything compromising that could potentially be on my main laptop OS?

Can I store keys on that drive and make copies of the complete drive?

Presumably, I'd have to go online momentarily whilst using that flash drive to transact into or out of it.  Even if for a couple of minutes, is this an issue?

What other considerations are there for a bootable flash drive crypto solution?

Title: Re: Bootable usb for crypto??
Post by: dragononcrypto on November 06, 2018, 10:47:11 AM

Great question by the way, it's always important to think about security and improve your backup systems.
Depending on how secure you want your USB device to be, I'd always recommend veracrypt (https://www.veracrypt.fr) for the following reasons (I'll get back to bootable USB after):

• You can then have a secure and simple small file, around 250-500MB, that can store all your private keys, wallet data files, passwords, etc.
• You can make duplicates (multiple backups), put copies on other harddrives, securely upload to clouds, etc. I have over a dozen backups for example.
• Veracrypt is the securest encryption currently know that has passed extensive penetrating audits. It's like locking your keys in a vault.
• Veracrypt is based on the notorious TrueCrypt software, the open-source disk encryption software for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

Otherwise, considerations for a bootable flash drive would be to use a lightweight Linux-based live system like Linux Mint Xcfe, Lubuntu or otherwise, using the default LUKS encryption SHA256 system encryption, to have access to your assets via bootable USB drive. Although SHA256 is still considered completely secure (it is Bitcoin's encryption after all!), it wouldn't be as secure as Veracrypt, using the AES-Twofish-Serpent encryption algorithm in combination with SHA512. Just saying  :P

To be fully private and anonymous, as well as secure, then you should use veracrypt files along with Tails operating system (https://tails.boum.org/), but this wouldn't be necessary for your security imo. There's even the option to have a persistent volume, separate from the amnesic operating system, but I wouldn't recommend it for obvious reasons ;) Especially if you need to download blockchains to make transactions etc...

Hope that info helps!