<p>It would not be wise to do this. </p>

<p>"Brainwallet" software is completely non-standardized, there's no guarantee that any two implementations handle the encoding of characters in the same way. Addition of UTF8/UTF16 these characters is also likely to be incredibly confusing, did you mean Tooxy or Тооху? Those strings look the same but one is a completely different set of Unicode characters (and make two entirely different keys). </p>

<p>Even with the addition of non-standard characters it's unlikely any particular human generated string will have <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foil0hzl4Pg">enough entropy to avoid attack</a>. Staying far away from the brainwallet concept entirely would be most sensible, it's extremely broken and will likely lead to a loss of money either through theft or faulty software. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-10-20T03:15:51.967Z
So, in short, "no because using a brainwallet is not a wise thing to do". I just wanted to point out for the reader that there's two types of wallets that sometimes get called brainwallets. Wallets where you pick a phrase, and wallets where the wallet generates a 12-24 word phrase for you. The second method is fairly secure, and won't ever have non-standard characters in the output, because the goal is to be easy to retype.
morsecoder
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-10-20T03:20:11.193Z
Mostly, "no because this doesn't fix the problem with brainwallets and probably makes them considerably worse". Your mileage may vary but I don't think most people can be reasonably expected to remember a [BIP39](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki) seed, humans are pretty lossy with that sort of information if they don't recall it very regularly.
Claris
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-10-20T18:12:53.397Z
If we're talking about choosing which characters to appear in a brainwallet, we're almost certainly talking about the first, and the answer is indeed "no because you shouldn't be using a brainwallet like that at all".
Pieter Wuille
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-10-20T21:28:16.993Z
so it would be wise for those that understand unicode encoding differences to use these characters. as the majority of the population wouldn't be using it, so in effect you have something you cant even brute force due to the fact that hackers dont have these characters in their brute forcing systems.
Patoshi パトシ
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-10-20T02:49:30.710Z
2015-10-20T02:49:30.710Z
Claris
<p>What are some pitfalls if you use non-standard ascii characters in your brainwallet? Say if you were to use asian language characters? Or even extended ascii characters (<a href="http://www.theasciicode.com.ar/ascii-control-characters/delete-ascii-code-127.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.theasciicode.com.ar/ascii-control-characters/delete-ascii-code-127.html</a>) ? </p>

<p>What are some pitfalls by doing this? would it make your brain wallet incompatible in the futre? Pros/cons?</p>

<security><private-key><wallet-security><brain-wallet>
Would it be wise and extra secure to use non-ascii characters in a brain wallet?
Patoshi パトシ
# Would it be wise and extra secure to use non-ascii characters in a brain wallet?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-10-17)

What are some pitfalls if you use non-standard ascii characters in your brainwallet? Say if you were to use asian language characters? Or even extended ascii characters (<http://www.theasciicode.com.ar/ascii-control-characters/delete-ascii-code-127.html>) ?

What are some pitfalls by doing this? would it make your brain wallet incompatible in the futre? Pros/cons?

**Tags:** security, private-key, wallet-security, brain-wallet


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2015-10-20. Score: 5

It would not be wise to do this.

"Brainwallet" software is completely non-standardized, there's no guarantee that any two implementations handle the encoding of characters in the same way. Addition of UTF8/UTF16 these characters is also likely to be incredibly confusing, did you mean Tooxy or Тооху? Those strings look the same but one is a completely different set of Unicode characters (and make two entirely different keys).

Even with the addition of non-standard characters it's unlikely any particular human generated string will have [enough entropy to avoid attack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foil0hzl4Pg). Staying far away from the brainwallet concept entirely would be most sensible, it's extremely broken and will likely lead to a loss of money either through theft or faulty software.

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: So, in short, "no because using a brainwallet is not a wise thing to do". I just wanted to point out for the reader that there's two types of wallets that sometimes get called brainwallets. Wallets where you pick a phrase, and wallets where the wallet generates a 12-24 word phrase for you. The second method is fairly secure, and won't ever have non-standard characters in the output, because the goal is to be easy to retype.  
> **username_1**: Mostly, "no because this doesn't fix the problem with brainwallets and probably makes them considerably worse". Your mileage may vary but I don't think most people can be reasonably expected to remember a [BIP39](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki) seed, humans are pretty lossy with that sort of information if they don't recall it very regularly.  
> **username_3**: If we're talking about choosing which characters to appear in a brainwallet, we're almost certainly talking about the first, and the answer is indeed "no because you shouldn't be using a brainwallet like that at all".  
> **username_0**: so it would be wise for those that understand unicode encoding differences to use these characters. as the majority of the population wouldn't be using it, so in effect you have something you cant even brute force due to the fact that hackers dont have these characters in their brute forcing systems.  

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