Re: [rdiff-backup-users] backing up a Bitcoin wallet (private key)

[Dominic Raferd]

On 09/12/2013 16:48, Grant wrote:
> I was planning to back up my Bitcoin wallet (private key) along with
> the rest of my system backups which are versioned by rdiff-backup.
> However, it occurred to me that if the password with which my wallet
> is encrypted is deemed non-secure at some point and I change that
> password, the rdiff-backup repository will still contain the private
> key encrypted with the non-secure password.
>
> Am I thinking this through correctly?  If so, can I delete all
> versions of a particular file from an rdiff-backup repository?
>
> - Grant

I think it could be a problem yes because the whole point of 
rdiff-backup is to be able to recover the old version files, and if this 
old file version is insecure *and a malefactor gains access to your 
repository* then said malefactor can get the file contents.

And I don't believe there is any official or safe way to a delete a 
single file from a repository. The workaround is to exclude this file 
from your normal rdiff-backup and then do a separate rdiff-backup run 
into a separate repository just for this file. Then you could always in 
the future delete this whole (single-file-based) repository, or delete 
some old history in this repository, without losing your older file 
history for other files (which would be in the other repository).

Bear in mind that rdiff-backup was not designed with security as a 
consideration (by contrast, duplicity *was*); still I think the 
workaround above should give you what you need.

HTH, Dominic

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