Bitcoin Q&A: Why is Seed Splitting a Bad Idea?
Channel: aantonop
Date: 2020-04-08

Why is dividing seed words and storing them in different locations a bad idea? Why is this a loss in security? How is this less secure as compared to Shamir's Secret Sharing?

Chapters
0:00 A friend had the idea to achieve two out of three protection from my wallet seed by storing the seed in the following way...
2:13 SLIP-39
2:55 Shamir Secret Sharing Scheme
3:32 Let's go back to the example you offered
5:16 Brute forcing 80 bits
7:35 Complexity is not just the enemy of security, in many cases, it's the enemy of usability
7:56 The scheme you have described is not secure
8:53 Use the standards that have been written by experts

This question is from the February monthly patron session, which took place on February 29th, 2020. If you want early-access to talks and a chance to participate in the monthly live Q&As with Andreas, become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/aantonop

Correction: At 6 minutes into the video Andreas mentions that brute-forcing 80 bits of entropy is 2^196 times easier than brute-forcing 256 bits of entropy. It is actually 2^176 times easier.

Related Videos:
Bitcoin Q&A: Key management and inheritance planning - https://youtu.be/W3XADagE6P8
Bitcoin Q&A: Key storage best practices - https://youtu.be/A5I55aOgX2o 
Bitcoin Q&A: Is quantum computing a threat? - https://youtu.be/wlzJyp3Qm7s
Bitcoin Q&A: Setting up secure storage devices - https://youtu.be/wZ9LxLLvfXc
Bitcoin Q&A: What is a private key? - https://youtu.be/xxfUpIV9wRI
Bitcoin Q&A: Multi-signature and distributed storage - https://youtu.be/cAP2u6w_1-k 
Bitcoin Q&A: How do mnemonic seeds work? - https://youtu.be/wWCIQFNf_8g 
Bitcoin Q&A: Threshold signatures and Shamir secret sharing - https://youtu.be/4U52kZYBApM 
Bitcoin Q&A: Incentivised cybersecurity & decentralization - https://youtu.be/Z5_laR0bwHg 
Bitcoin Q&A: Data integrity and validation of keys - https://youtu.be/LjbREINFrZk 

Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a technologist and serial entrepreneur who has become one of the most well-known and respected figures in Bitcoin. He is the author of “Mastering Bitcoin,” “The Internet of Money" series, and "Mastering Ethereum."

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