[Tails-dev] Update Electrum documentation for Tails 1.8 upgr…

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Author: Michael English
Date:  
To: The Tails public development discussion list, s7r
Subject: [Tails-dev] Update Electrum documentation for Tails 1.8 upgrade to version 2.5.4
My main goal with the documentation is informing users of the
vulnerabilities of Electrum in Tails to promote secure practices.

I don't think that Bitcoin should be installed in Tails in the first
place for the following reasons:
Bitcoin is unstable software/protocol
Tails runs off of memory
We have to trust a remote server
Tor traffic can be manipulated

Would you log in to your bank over Tor even if it was encrypted with
SSL? Money can't be stolen with Electrum, but the SPV verification can
cause servers to withhold information from their clients leading to an
incorrect balance.

Until we can get the prefnet=tor option, I would like to recommend that
the user manually selects a trusted onion server in place of the SPV
documentation to protect against an out-of-date bitcoin balance. Then,
the user would have a strongly encrypted connection exchanging accurate
information about the bitcoin network.

Also, we should include the change of default base unit and link to
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units .

I have a few small grammar edits and clarifications to the first few
lines of the existing documentation:
Remove comma after passphrase, put a comma after seed, and change so to
lowercase.
Also, change the period after blockchain to a comma and change the so to
lowercase again.
Add “for extra security” after “offline working session.”

If you disagree, please tell me what specific information should be
written instead.

Cheers,
Michael English