This commit adds support for ckeys, or enCrypted private keys, to the wallet.
All keys are stored in memory in their encrypted form and thus the passphrase
is required from the user to spend coins, or to create new addresses.
Keys are encrypted with AES-256-CBC using OpenSSL's EVP library. The key is
calculated via EVP_BytesToKey using SHA512 with (by default) 25000 rounds and
a random salt.
By default, the user's wallet remains unencrypted until they call the RPC
command encryptwallet <passphrase> or, from the GUI menu, Options->
Encrypt Wallet.
When the user is attempting to call RPC functions which require the password
to unlock the wallet, an error will be returned unless they call
walletpassphrase <passphrase> <time to keep key in memory> first.
A keypoolrefill command has been added which tops up the users keypool
(requiring the passphrase via walletpassphrase first).
keypoolsize has been added to the output of getinfo to show the user the
number of keys left before they need to specify their passphrase (and call
keypoolrefill).
Note that walletpassphrase will automatically fill keypool in a separate
thread which it spawns when the passphrase is set. This could cause some
delays in other threads waiting for locks on the wallet passphrase, including
one which could cause the passphrase to be stored longer than expected,
however it will not allow the passphrase to be used longer than expected as
ThreadCleanWalletPassphrase will attempt to get a lock on the key as soon
as the specified lock time has arrived.
When the keypool runs out (and wallet is locked) GetOrReuseKeyFromPool
returns vchDefaultKey, meaning miners may start to generate many blocks to
vchDefaultKey instead of a new key each time.
A walletpassphrasechange <oldpassphrase> <newpassphrase> has been added to
allow the user to change their password via RPC.
Whenever keying material (unencrypted private keys, the user's passphrase,
the wallet's AES key) is stored unencrypted in memory, any reasonable attempt
is made to mlock/VirtualLock that memory before storing the keying material.
This is not true in several (commented) cases where mlock/VirtualLocking the
memory is not possible.
Although encryption of private keys in memory can be very useful on desktop
systems (as some small amount of protection against stupid viruses), on an
RPC server, the password is entered fairly insecurely. Thus, the only main
advantage encryption has for RPC servers is for RPC servers that do not spend
coins, except in rare cases, eg. a webserver of a merchant which only receives
payment except for cases of manual intervention.
Thanks to jgarzik for the original patch and sipa, gmaxwell and many others
for all their input.
Conflicts:
src/wallet.cpp
Developers work in their own trees, then submit pull requests when they think their feature or bug fix is ready.
If it is a simple/trivial/non-controversial change, then one of the bitcoin development team members simply pulls it.
If it is a more complicated or potentially controversial change, then the patch submitter will be asked to start a discussion (if they haven't already) on the development forums: http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?board=6.0
The patch will be accepted if there is broad consensus that it is a good thing. Developers should expect to rework and resubmit patches if they don't match the project's coding conventions (see coding.txt) or are controversial.
The master branch is regularly built and tested (by who? need people willing to be quality assurance testers), and periodically pushed to the subversion repo to become the official, stable, released bitcoin.
Feature branches are created when there are major new features being worked on by several people.
Matt Corallo
4e87d341f7