<p>My first instinct is to answer "No". As long as an application is installed locally and cannot send information over the internet to a third party, it's pretty much as secure as can be. There's no good reason to think that either would be more secure.</p>

<p>But there is a <em>slightly bad</em> one... (maybe not bad, but possibly a bit paranoid)...</p>

<p>Consider this: even if a program is open source, it's compiled, which means it not feasible to see the actual code and what it's doing. The software could be sending data when <em>says</em> it's not. Or it could be saving data in a hidden part of your operating system to be retrieved later by another malicious program. It could be doing a number of things that it shouldn't be and it would be very difficult for the end user to know.</p>

<p>A locally installed website, on the other hand, contains uncompiled code which is, at least somewhat, human readable. So, if you really wanted to, you could make sure that a locally installed website such as bitaddress.org isn't doing anything that it shouldn't. Although, this is infeisable for most, I once spent a while looking at brainwallet.org's source code to at least get a partial understand of how it works.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-27T17:59:00.147Z
It occurs to me that if you're suspicious of the compiler you should also be suspicious of the browser and/or javascript engine, no?
David Perry
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-27T18:47:25.607Z
I think I will go for a local copy of bitaddress as github clone brought to an offline machine with an usb stick.
And i'm going to do a bip0038 encryption on the private key. bitaddress can revert to the public key by using the password, are there other tools which do this?
hubertusanton
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-28T02:24:52.813Z
@DavidPerry Yup! You can't really be 100% sure that your computer isn't doing something that you don't want to do unless you build the computer from scratch and you've taken a look at the source code for everything that you run on it, including the operating system, the compilers, etc. But as I mentioned, this is a somewhat paranoid way to think and terribly infeasible to actually do.
John Henry
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-27T13:27:13.623Z
2013-11-27T13:27:13.623Z
John Henry
<p>Is an application like armory or bitcoin-qt more secure/ trustable in generating the public and private keys than a locally installed version of bitaddress.org ?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-27T08:48:18.207Z
Welcome to StackExchange, we're always happy to see new users, especially ones who ask good questions we can actually read! That said, we do prefer that you only ask one question per... question. If you can find a way to edit this to fit that requirement that's awesome. If not, would you mind terribly editing out some of those bullet points and asking them separately?
David Perry
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-27T08:48:45.833Z
Oh, and don't forget to search before asking - nothing ruins the new user experience like having your first question closed :P
David Perry
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-27T17:57:50.813Z
Awesome, it looks great. Feel free to ask the remainder as separate questions. Welcome to StackExchange, we're glad to have you!
David Perry
<wallet><offline>
Private key generation bitaddress.org vs application wallet (armory / bitcoin-qt)
hubertusanton
# Private key generation bitaddress.org vs application wallet (armory / bitcoin-qt)

(Asked by: username_0 on 2013-11-27)

Is an application like armory or bitcoin-qt more secure/ trustable in generating the public and private keys than a locally installed version of bitaddress.org ?

**Tags:** wallet, offline

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Welcome to StackExchange, we're always happy to see new users, especially ones who ask good questions we can actually read! That said, we do prefer that you only ask one question per... question. If you can find a way to edit this to fit that requirement that's awesome. If not, would you mind terribly editing out some of those bullet points and asking them separately?  
> **username_1**: Oh, and don't forget to search before asking - nothing ruins the new user experience like having your first question closed :P  
> **username_1**: Awesome, it looks great. Feel free to ask the remainder as separate questions. Welcome to StackExchange, we're glad to have you!  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2013-11-27. Score: 1

My first instinct is to answer "No". As long as an application is installed locally and cannot send information over the internet to a third party, it's pretty much as secure as can be. There's no good reason to think that either would be more secure.

But there is a *slightly bad* one... (maybe not bad, but possibly a bit paranoid)...

Consider this: even if a program is open source, it's compiled, which means it not feasible to see the actual code and what it's doing. The software could be sending data when *says* it's not. Or it could be saving data in a hidden part of your operating system to be retrieved later by another malicious program. It could be doing a number of things that it shouldn't be and it would be very difficult for the end user to know.

A locally installed website, on the other hand, contains uncompiled code which is, at least somewhat, human readable. So, if you really wanted to, you could make sure that a locally installed website such as bitaddress.org isn't doing anything that it shouldn't. Although, this is infeisable for most, I once spent a while looking at brainwallet.org's source code to at least get a partial understand of how it works.

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: It occurs to me that if you're suspicious of the compiler you should also be suspicious of the browser and/or javascript engine, no?  
> **username_0**: I think I will go for a local copy of bitaddress as github clone brought to an offline machine with an usb stick. And i'm going to do a bip0038 encryption on the private key. bitaddress can revert to the public key by using the password, are there other tools which do this?  
> **username_2**: @username_1 Yup! You can't really be 100% sure that your computer isn't doing something that you don't want to do unless you build the computer from scratch and you've taken a look at the source code for everything that you run on it, including the operating system, the compilers, etc. But as I mentioned, this is a somewhat paranoid way to think and terribly infeasible to actually do.  

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