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@ -67,6 +67,50 @@ entering your wallet passphrase in the Bitcoin client and using the
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same passphrase only as your wallet passphrase.
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Technical details of wallet encryption
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--------------------------------------
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Wallet encryption uses AES-256-CBC to encrypt only the private keys
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that are held in a wallet. The keys are encrypted with a master key
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which is entirely random. This master key is then encrypted with
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AES-256-CBC with a key derived from the passphrase using SHA512 and
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OpenSSL's EVP_BytesToKey and a dynamic number of rounds determined by
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the speed of the machine which does the initial encryption (and is
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updated based on the speed of a computer which does a subsequent
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passphrase change). Although the underlying code supports multiple
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encrypted copies of the same master key (and thus multiple passphrases)
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the client does not yet have a method to add additional passphrases.
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At runtime, the client loads the wallet as it normally would, however
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the keystore stores the keys in encrypted form. When the passphrase
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is required (to top up keypool or send coins) it will either be queried
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by a GUI prompt, or must first be entered with the walletpassphrase
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RPC command. This will change the wallet to "unlocked" state where the
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unencrypted master key is stored in memory (in the case of GUI, only for
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long enough to complete the requested operation, in RPC, for as long as
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is specified by the second parameter to walletpassphrase). The wallet is
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then locked (or can be manually locked using the walletlock RPC command)
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and the unencrypted master key is removed from memory.
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Implementation details of wallet encryption
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-------------------------------------------
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When the wallet is locked, calls to sendtoaddress, sendfrom, sendmany,
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and keypoolrefill will return Error -13: "Error: Please enter the wallet
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passphrase with walletpassphrase first."
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When the wallet is unlocked, calls to walletpassphrase will fail.
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When a wallet is encrypted, the passphrase is required to top up the
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keypool, thus, if the passphrase is rarely entered, it is possible that
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keypool might run out. In this case, the default key will be used as the
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target for payouts for mining, and calls to getnewaddress and getaccount
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address will return an error. In order to prevent such cases, the keypool
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is automatically refilled when walletpassphrase is called with a correct
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passphrase and when topupkeypool is called (while the wallet is unlocked).
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Note that the keypool continues to be topped up on various occasions when
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a new key from pool is used and the wallet is unlocked (or unencrypted).
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See the documentation at the bitcoin wiki:
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https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page
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