One of the concerns I have in this new world of cryptocurrency wallets is that I’ve never had a file that was worth thousands of Euros! Until now the worst thing that could happen (twice) was that I could lose all my photos…

The immediate solution I imagine to make sure I don’t lose my wallet is to make many copies of it and spread them around all my computers, gdrive and dropbox. But what if some hacker gains access to the file? He could somehow crack my password and gain access to my ETH stash!

The solution I have found so far is to keep several encrypted copies of my wallet. After doing some research I like GPG (the Gnu version of PGP) which is open source and has been around for a long time. This way, if the hacker gained access to this file he would first need to crack the encryption and the Ethereum password having 2 strong layers of complexity.

I’ve installed it so far in my Windows and Mac computers and it’s pretty straight forward.

1. Windows:
   1. Go to https://www.gpg4win.org/ and download the windows executable (currently Gpg4win 2.3.2)
   2. Once it’s installed you can use the following programs:
      1. kleopatra: with this tool you can create and manage your certificates.
         1. Go to File>New Certificate>Create a personal OpenPGP key pair and follow the instructions. Don’t forget your passphrase! 🙂
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         2. Once you have your private/public key pair generated you may want to share your public key with the world so they can send you encrypted messages which only you can decrypt. You can do this by right clicking on your certificate and selecting “Export Certificates…”
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         3. A file will be generated with your public key which looks something like the below picture. Put this in your blog, email signature, billboard… you can share this public key with no risk. People can use it to send you encrypted messages. You can see my public key here
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         4. You may also want to export your private key, to copy it to another computer on which you will want to decrypt messages. Take care to ensure your private key is not shared with anyone. To do this right click on your certificate and select “Export Secret Keys…”
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      2. GgpEx: You can access this tool by right clicking on any file and selecting the GpgEx menu. For example to encrypt a file right click on your file (for example your Ethereum wallet) and select under the GpgEx menu>Encrypt
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      3. You will now see a new file with the extension .gpg This file is encrypted and can only be decrypted by you.
      4. To decrypt it you can right click on it>GpgEx Menu>Decrypt. Insert your password and the file is decrypted.
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2. For Mac the idea is the same, I’m using https://gpgtools.org/
   1. You can create new encryption keys with “GPG Keychain”. You can also copy from a different computer the private keys that you have created (in my case with the windows computer) and import them by clicking on Import.
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   2. Once the keys are generated (or imported) you can decrypt a file by right clicking on it and selecting “Services>OpenPGP: Decrypt File”
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Thanks to this I can now export my Ethereum wallet. Encrypt it and save a copy in my google drive, which I can download to any computer on which I have my gpg private key in case I need to send some ETH.