Backups and safety
Almost every loss in self-custody comes down to one of two things: the seed is lost, or someone else gets it. This lesson covers the habits that prevent both, the scams built to steal seeds, and the encrypted backups that protect everything else.
Stay safe: the seed
From Lesson 1: the seed phrase rebuilds the whole wallet on any device, and nobody can reset or recover it. That makes it the single most important thing to protect.
Never let the seed touch a network
Write the seed on paper, or stamp it in metal. Never photograph it, never type it into a website, chat, email, notes app, password field or cloud drive, and never read it out on a call. A photo can sync to the cloud without you noticing; a typed seed can be captured by the page, the app or malware on the device. Kilonova never asks for your seed except when you restore a wallet in the app yourself.
Good habits for the paper copy:
| Do | Why |
|---|---|
| Write every word, numbered, in order, and check the spelling | One wrong or missing word can make the seed useless |
| Prove it works by restoring from it, on stagenet first | Finding a mistake now costs nothing; finding it later costs everything |
| Keep it where fire, water and other people cannot reach it | Paper is the one copy that matters |
| Consider a second copy in a separate safe place | One fire or flood should not take both |
| Label practice seeds STAGENET | So a practice seed is never mistaken for a real one |
Scams to recognise
Every one of these is after the same thing: your seed, your keys, or a payment you cannot reverse.
| The scam | What it looks like | The tell |
|---|---|---|
| Fake support | Someone replies to your question online, or calls, offering help, then asks for your seed or for remote access to your screen | Real support never needs your seed. There is no support desk that can recover a self-custody wallet |
| Seed "verification" or "sync" sites | A page or pop-up asks you to enter your seed to "validate", "unlock", "fix sync" or "claim" something | Entering a seed anywhere other than your own wallet app hands it over |
| Fake wallets | A look-alike app in a store, a sponsored search result, or a download link in a message | Get wallets only from the project's own release page, and check the download (below) |
| Giveaways and doubling | "Send some coins and get twice as much back" | Nobody sends money back. Payments cannot be reversed |
| Address swapping | Malware replaces the address you copied with its own | Compare the address on Check before sending with the one you were given |
Check a download before you trust it
Kilonova publishes a SHA256SUMS file with every release. It lists a fingerprint (hash) of each file. If your download's hash matches, the file is complete and unchanged. With the file and SHA256SUMS in the same folder, on Linux:
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missingA good download prints its name and OK:
kilonova_<version>_amd64.deb: OKA damaged or altered file prints FAILED. Do not install it:
kilonova_<version>_amd64.deb: FAILED
sha256sum: WARNING: 1 computed checksum did NOT match
…This proves the file matches the release it came from, so download both from the official releases page linked in Install Kilonova, never from a link someone sent you.
Encrypted backups
The seed is the backup of your funds. It does not hold the extras you build up in a wallet: labels, the address book, notes, payment requests and node settings. For those, Kilonova makes a backup file.
| Seed | Kilonova backup file | |
|---|---|---|
| Restores your funds | Yes | Yes, with the wallet password and the backup passphrase |
| Restores labels, notes, address book | No | Yes |
| Works in other Monero wallets | Yes | No, Kilonova only |
| Where to keep it | Offline, on paper | Anywhere you choose; it is encrypted |
You make one under Settings, Backup: choose the wallets, type a Backup passphrase of at least 12 characters, and select Save backup. The file holds each wallet still locked with its own password, and the whole file is encrypted again with the passphrase. Kilonova never sends a backup anywhere. If you forget the passphrase, nobody can open the file. Keep your seed written down even when you make backups. See Back up your wallets.
For people who run a light wallet server
In Lesson 3 you saw that a light wallet server receives users' view keys. The monero-lws database stores those view keys in plain form, so a plain copy of that database is as sensitive as the server itself.
lmdb-lws-backup makes daily backups of a running monero-lws database. It encrypts the copy as it is made (XChaCha20-Poly1305), so no unencrypted copy is written to disk, then checks every backup before keeping it. All backups use one key, 32 random bytes written as base64:
head -c 32 /dev/urandom | base64That prints 44 characters. Its guide writes the key straight into a root-only file instead, so it never appears on screen. Two rules decide whether those backups protect anyone:
- Keep a copy of the key off the server. If the key is lost, every backup is permanently unreadable.
- Never store the key next to the backups. Anyone with both can read every user's view keys.
Read Keys and security before taking a first backup.
If you suspect a leak
Act on what leaked, not on how likely it is that someone saw it. On stagenet this is practice; on mainnet, do it at once.
| What may have leaked | What someone can do | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Seed (photographed, typed into a site, seen) | Take all the funds | On a device you trust, create a new wallet with a new seed, write it down, and move everything to it right away. Stop using the old seed |
| Private spend key | Take all the funds | The same as a leaked seed |
| Private view key, or a light wallet server you no longer trust | See every payment you receive, but not spend | If that matters, move the funds to a new wallet that uses full sync |
| Wallet password, device still safe | Open the wallet on this device, if they get the device | Change password in Wallet options |
| Device lost or stolen | Try to open the encrypted wallet file | Restore from your seed on another device. If the password was weak, treat it as a seed leak |
| Backup passphrase | Open the backup file, if they also have it; each wallet inside still needs its password | Make a new backup with a new passphrase and delete old copies of the file |
| You installed a wallet from an unofficial source and typed your seed into it | Assume the seed is known | Treat it as a seed leak |
In the apps
- Kilonova beginner guide: write down your seed
- Back up your wallets
- Kilonova FAQ: safety
- lmdb-lws-backup beginner guide
Check yourself
Question 1 of 6
Where should you keep your seed phrase?
What you learned
- The seed stays on paper, offline, and is tested by restoring from it.
- Fake support, seed "verification" sites, fake wallets, giveaways and address swapping all aim at your seed or an irreversible payment.
- A checksum file tells you a download is complete and unchanged.
- Kilonova backup files keep labels and settings, encrypted with a passphrase; lmdb-lws-backup encrypts a light wallet server's database, and its key must live apart from the backups.
- After a seed or spend key leak, move the funds to a new wallet with a new seed.