Re: [Bitcoin-development] minor bitcoin-qt gripes moving BTC off specific key

[Craig B Agricola <craig@theagricolas.org>]

BTW, Adam, I suspect you might be using the console in the GUI, and that might be
under Windows for all I know, but I usually do it this way on the command line
under Linux:

echo -n "Password: ";bitcoind walletpassphrase `stty -echo;read p;echo $p;stty echo` 60; echo

This uses the JSON API to unlock the wallet (for 60 seconds; which is the "60"
at the end), and should work for either the GUI (if you start it with the
-server flag) or the headless bitcoind.  It keeps the password that you type
off the console, and also keeps it out of the history file.  The only issue
with it is that it will show up in the process tree as an argument of the
command for the period of time that the JSON API is being prepared and sent,
which should be fairly short.  This might be a concern if you are on a
multi-user system (you probably shouldn't be doing this anyway), or
worry that spyware might be monitoring for passwords (though if you are
worried about spyware, you should already be concerned about keyloggers,
so...) I doubt this will work (without significant modifications) on
Windows without Cygwin, though.

 -Craig

On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 02:16:41PM +0200, Adam Back wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Three minor security/other issues:
> 
> 1. please a way to unlock the wallet without displaying wallet password in
>    console screen (console unlock wallet, to import priv key); or