Re: Free Blockchain Based Secure Password Manager: B.lock
Denna Repaci
I am using a proprietary password manager and have hundreds of passwords stored there. I am just a bit worried that the service once goes down and I lose all my passwords (including encryption keys of crypto wallets). With a blockchain-based solution, the risk of this happening should be decreased in my opinion.
You don't need a blockchain in order for it to be open source (and you shouldn't use blockchains to store private data, as explained by CPereez19). Instead, why not consider a local password manager such as KeePassXC or Pass? You can still rsync it or store it in a generic cloud storage solution if you want synchronization.
I think what you may want is a stateless password manager. You can choose to memorize a single or multiple master passwords, depending on your security needs, and this stateless password manager should always spit out the same deterministic password (with requested parameters of length and potentially characters). I find, just as you, that there are more points of failure with the aforementioned password managers, which keep state, encrypted or not. If your only HDD with the DB fails, what good is the encryption. Also they are quite cumbersome, especially if you travel.
Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and behavioral finance. Adam received his master's in economics from The New School for Social Research and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in sociology. He is a CFA charterholder as well as holding FINRA Series 7, 55 & 63 licenses. He currently researches and teaches economic sociology and the social studies of finance at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Not all blockchains are 100% impenetrable. They are distributed ledgers that use code to create the security level they have become known for. If there are vulnerabilities in the coding, they can be exploited.
Blockchain can also give those in countries with unstable currencies or financial infrastructures a more stable currency and financial system. They would have access to more applications and a wider network of individuals and institutions with whom they can do domestic and international business.
Simply put, a blockchain is a shared database or ledger. Pieces of data are stored in data structures known as blocks, and each network node has a replica of the entire database. Security is ensured since the majority will not accept this change if somebody tries to edit or delete an entry in one copy of the ledger.
The number of live blockchains is growing every day at an ever-increasing pace. As of 2023, there are more than 23,000 active cryptocurrencies based on blockchain, with several hundred more non-cryptocurrency blockchains.
A public blockchain, also known as an open or permissionless blockchain, is one where anybody can join the network freely and establish a node. Because of their open nature, these blockchains must be secured with cryptography and a consensus system like proof of work (PoW). A private or permissioned blockchain, on the other hand, requires each node to be approved before joining. Because nodes are considered to be trusted, the layers of security do not need to be as robust.
A blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (blocks) that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes.[1][2][3][4] Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree, where data nodes are represented by leaves). Since each block contains information about the previous block, they effectively form a chain (compare linked list data structure), with each additional block linking to the ones before it. Consequently, blockchain transactions are irreversible in that, once they are recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without altering all subsequent blocks.
Blockchains are typically managed by a peer-to-peer (P2P) computer network for use as a public distributed ledger, where nodes collectively adhere to a consensus algorithm protocol to add and validate new transaction blocks. Although blockchain records are not unalterable, since blockchain forks are possible, blockchains may be considered secure by design and exemplify a distributed computing system with high Byzantine fault tolerance.[5]
A blockchain was created by a person (or group of people) using the name (or pseudonym) Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 to serve as the public distributed ledger for bitcoin cryptocurrency transactions, based on previous work by Stuart Haber, W. Scott Stornetta, and Dave Bayer.[6] The implementation of the blockchain within bitcoin made it the first digital currency to solve the double-spending problem without the need for a trusted authority or central server. The bitcoin design has inspired other applications[3][2] and blockchains that are readable by the public and are widely used by cryptocurrencies. The blockchain may be considered a type of payment rail.[7]
Private blockchains have been proposed for business use. Computerworld called the marketing of such privatized blockchains without a proper security model "snake oil";[8] however, others have argued that permissioned blockchains, if carefully designed, may be more decentralized and therefore more secure in practice than permissionless ones.[4][9]
Cryptographer David Chaum first proposed a blockchain-like protocol in his 1982 dissertation "Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups."[10] Further work on a cryptographically secured chain of blocks was described in 1991 by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta.[4][11] They wanted to implement a system wherein document timestamps could not be tampered with. In 1992, Haber, Stornetta, and Dave Bayer incorporated Merkle trees into the design, which improved its efficiency by allowing several document certificates to be collected into one block.[4][12] Under their company Surety, their document certificate hashes have been published in The New York Times every week since 1995.[13]
The first decentralized blockchain was conceptualized by a person (or group of people) known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Nakamoto improved the design in an important way using a Hashcash-like method to timestamp blocks without requiring them to be signed by a trusted party and introducing a difficulty parameter to stabilize the rate at which blocks are added to the chain.[4] The design was implemented the following year by Nakamoto as a core component of the cryptocurrency bitcoin, where it serves as the public ledger for all transactions on the network.[3]
In August 2014, the bitcoin blockchain file size, containing records of all transactions that have occurred on the network, reached 20 GB (gigabytes).[14] In January 2015, the size had grown to almost 30 GB, and from January 2016 to January 2017, the bitcoin blockchain grew from 50 GB to 100 GB in size. The ledger size had exceeded 200 GB by early 2020.[15]
According to Accenture, an application of the diffusion of innovations theory suggests that blockchains attained a 13.5% adoption rate within financial services in 2016, therefore reaching the early adopters' phase.[17] Industry trade groups joined to create the Global Blockchain Forum in 2016, an initiative of the Chamber of Digital Commerce.
In May 2018, Gartner found that only 1% of CIOs indicated any kind of blockchain adoption within their organisations, and only 8% of CIOs were in the short-term "planning or [looking at] active experimentation with blockchain".[18] For the year 2019 Gartner reported 5% of CIOs believed blockchain technology was a 'game-changer' for their business.[19]
A blockchain is a decentralized, distributed, and often public, digital ledger consisting of records called blocks that are used to record transactions across many computers so that any involved block cannot be altered retroactively, without the alteration of all subsequent blocks.[3][20] This allows the participants to verify and audit transactions independently and relatively inexpensively.[21] A blockchain database is managed autonomously using a peer-to-peer network and a distributed timestamping server. They are authenticated by mass collaboration powered by collective self-interests.[22] Such a design facilitates robust workflow where participants' uncertainty regarding data security is marginal. The use of a blockchain removes the characteristic of infinite reproducibility from a digital asset. It confirms that each unit of value was transferred only once, solving the long-standing problem of double-spending. A blockchain has been described as a value-exchange protocol.[23] A blockchain can maintain title rights because, when properly set up to detail the exchange agreement, it provides a record that compels offer and acceptance.[citation needed]
Blocks hold batches of valid transactions that are hashed and encoded into a Merkle tree.[3] Each block includes the cryptographic hash of the prior block in the blockchain, linking the two. The linked blocks form a chain.[3] This iterative process confirms the integrity of the previous block, all the way back to the initial block, which is known as the genesis block (Block 0).[26][27] To assure the integrity of a block and the data contained in it, the block is usually digitally signed.[28]
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