Docs - Monero Usage and Storage Best Practices
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layout: post
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title: Monero Usage and Storage Best Practices
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subtitle: Monero best practice
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tags: [usage, storage, guideline]
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gh-badge: [star, fork, follow]
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---
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## 6 Monero Usage and Storage Best Practices
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Ease of use is one of the critical aspects of every cryptocurrency and
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although Monero can offer a wide range of privacy features it has to be
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usable and user-friendly to be used by a substantial margin of people.
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Usability in Monero is a long-term topic that sparks discussion [55].
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While significant number of users reported that they perform back-
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ups of their wallet keys, many of them use hot wallet on their mobile
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phones which presents a security threat for their wallet.
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Following scenarios represent secure and easy to use instructions
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for a new Monero user, based on results from Monero user research
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in the Chapter 5.
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### 6.1 Generating the keys and accessing the wallet
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The first challenge for Monero users is generating key pairs and access-
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ing the wallet. This process varies from the user’s platform of choice
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and used wallet software. As the choice of client wallet software is
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important for Monero users in terms of user experience and security,
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the following Sections are dedicated to available wallet software.
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**6.1.1 Windows and Linux platform**
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The official client offers CLI and GUI wallet management and is avail-
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able athttps://getmonero.org/downloads/. Using this client users
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can generate wallet keys. Created keys are after generation saved
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directly into the memory of the device unless specified otherwise.
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<pre>
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.\monero−wallet−cli.exe
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Monero Lithium Luna (v0.12.3.0−release)
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Logging to C:\Users\radim\Nextcloud\ssme−thesis\cli\monero−wallet−cli.log
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Specify wallet file name (e.g., MyWallet). If the wallet
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file is not present, it will be created.
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Wallet file name (or Ctrl−C to exit): ssme−thesis
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No wallet found with that name. Confirm creation of new
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wallet named: ssme−thesis
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(Y/Yes/N/No): Y
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Generating new wallet...
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</pre>
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Security of this task depends on the origin of the software, delivery
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chain trust, and the users’ operating system. Monero CLI and GUI
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binaries can be edited, and the application itself does not call any
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internal checking to alert the user of the unauthorized change.
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Code injection was successfully tested on GUI binary of the official
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Monero wallet as seen in the Figure 9.2. Although SHA256 hash is pro-
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vided on the website, the user is not specifically instructed to check the
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hashes of the downloaded software with tools like PowerShell using
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Get-FileHash ./monero-wallet-gui.exe | Format-Listcommand
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[56]. GPG-signed list of the hashes is available on the website although
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there are no instructions on how to verify PGP signature itself.
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Algorithm : SHA256
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Hash : AF9324151909AC7B9BC6D622210EADFBAE5E66...
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Path : ./monero−wallet−gui−original.exe
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Algorithm : SHA256
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Hash : DF4EC49E088284ECC78DBBD8B9CEFF00A78085...
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Path : ./monero−wallet−gui−injected.exe
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## 6 Monero Usage and Storage Best Practices
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There are also alternative approaches to key generation like an
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offline JavaScript based monero-wallet-generator that is available at
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github.com/moneromooo-monero/monero-wallet-generator.
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Hardware way is considered to be in the development, but Monero
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compatible devices like Ledger Nano S are already on the market. The
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way how keys are generated in hardware wallets varies on firmware
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included in each device.
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In general, the wallet is required to have Monero application in-
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stalled from vendors application catalog. Keys are generated on the
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hardware device within the application itself, and the user can only
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export private view key from the device to view the balance in full
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CLI/GUI client.
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This way, the user has private spend key always on the device,
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and the client PC has only private view key. To sign a transaction,
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the user has to confirm the transaction on the device itself meaning
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the hardware wallet will sign the transaction and then sends it to
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the Monero client. By this, in case of a security breach on the host
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computer, there is no Monero to steal.
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#### 6.1.3 Wallet software for mobile devices
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Monero has wallet software available for Android as well as the iOS
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platform. Community recommends to use the open source ones for
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both platforms, as their codebase is published on GitHub and everyone
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can inspect the code. Another common fact for the recommended
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solutions is that the keypairs for the wallet are stored exclusively on
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the user’s device and restore can be done without third-party technical
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support.
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**Monerojuro** is an open source Android wallet application that is
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available on Google Play as well as APK release at Github. By this,
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users can install the application from the Google Play directly, man-
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ually download the APK or compile it from source code themselves.
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Wallet keys storage is based on the device only, and the application
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encourages users to back up their seed [57].
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**Monero Wallet** is an application released by Freewallet.org that
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provides Monero wallets for both Android and iOS. Regarding overall
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usability, this application is easier for an average user as it does not
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present any cryptocurrency wallet terms as key, seed, etc. The user is
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instead instructed to create a Freewallet account which acts as a wallet
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[58].
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By this, the user does not need to save the seed, wallet keys or
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make any backups as key management is completely on the side of
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the service provider, Freewallet.org. This fact is often emphasized in
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Monero community as the user that does not control the keys does
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not control the wallet. Also, the source code is not publicly available
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for the community to review.
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**Cake Wallet** represents open source Monero wallet for iOS that
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provides wallet generation and local key pair storage with remote
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node connection and synchronization [59].
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Guideline for secure wallet access is described in the Chapter 4.1.1.
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### 6.2 Secure storage system
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Wallet keys are everything when it comes to cryptocurrency usage.
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Who has the keys, controls the wallet and can view or transfer the
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balance to another address. If a user loses wallet keys, Monero wallet
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can still be recovered using mnemonic seed that should be saved on
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another storage medium.
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This Section describes possible ways of backing-up wallet keys.
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Primary storage media security is compared in the Figure 4.1.3.
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Data characteristics
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As described in the Section 4.1, Monero wallet consists of an encrypted
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wallet.keysfile that contains private spend and view keys. Size of
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this file is less than a few kilobytes.
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Another type of data that is presented to the user is mnemonic
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seed. Seed can be used for recovery when wallet file is lost and consists
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of 25 words with the last one being used for checksum.
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In total, Monero wallet requires less than 8 kilobytes for key and
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seed storage. This results in minimal space requirements for backup
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storage media.
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Backup strategy
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Best practice for backups that isn’t too demanding on the user side is
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the 3-2-1 strategy that is considered in the industry as a bare minimum
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for keeping the data safe [60].
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- 3 means having at least 3 copies of your data in total.
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- 2 of them are local but stored on different media types.
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**-** This can be represented as a combination of SSD and tape.
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- 1 is an offsite, geographically different location.
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**-** E.g., in the next building, a different facility, another city.
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In short, this means when your building with external drive burns
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down and your notebook gets cryptolocker on the same day, you still
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have your data safe as you have them in the offsite location.
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Data that users need to backup are not changing in the day to
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day usage, but only when the user creates a new or an additional
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wallet. Meaning that backing up the wallet does not need to be made
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frequently unlike other user data that are changed frequently, e.g.,
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documents. Verification, on the other hand, is more important as not
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only users should back up the data, they should also be able to restore
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them. For ease of use, users can verify the integrity of the backup by
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actually recovering the wallet from the backup media.
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6. Monero Usage and Storage Best Practices
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Recommended scheme
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Following cost effectivity of individual media types together with
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common backup strategy:
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- Total number of copies of data: 5
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- The primary data source is on the client device with wallet soft-
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ware. This source is then copied downstream to backup media.
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- All copies of the data should be encrypted using file-level encryp-
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tion regardless of the security of the device, e.g., by a popular
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open-source tool like VeraCrypt.
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- Local copy
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**-** Located on disk with full volume encryption, e.g., by Bit-
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Locker.
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**-** Paper backup in a secure container at a hidden place.
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- Offsite copy
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**-** Located on the flash drive with full volume encryption.
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**-** Located on the DVD as an encrypted file.
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Secure Monero usage portal
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As a result of this Chapter and Monero user research in the Chapter 5,
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all recommendations for secure Monero usage are compiled within
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one websitehttps://ownercz.github.io/ssme-thesis.
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### 6.3 Study limitations
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When interpreting Monero user and miners research results, the fol-
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lowing study limitations should be taken into account:
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- Self-selection bias of respondents in the dataset, which results
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in a non-representative sample of the population.
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- Reporting bias of responses in the dataset, as study gathers
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rather sensitive questions towards security habits and backups.
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- Limited time and reach of the questionnaires in the community
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that has participated in this research leading to non-representative
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population sample.
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