From 143c33de48252ae578e56fb05ca35b01510d4328 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: DanS <dan-s-dev@proton.me>
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2026 06:14:31 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] wallet: erase the plaintext HD seed record when the wallet is
 encrypted

CWalletDB::WriteCryptedHDSeed wrote the "chdseed" record and left "hdseed" in
place, unlike WriteCryptedKey which erases "key"/"wkey" after writing "ckey".
No erase of "hdseed" existed anywhere in src/wallet/.

CDB::Rewrite does not save us: EncryptWallet calls it with pszSkip defaulted, so
it copies every surviving record verbatim into the new file. The result is that a
wallet created unencrypted and later encrypted keeps its raw HD seed in cleartext
on disk permanently, and reloads it into memory on every start.

Add CWalletDB::EraseHDSeed and call it from CWallet::SetCryptedHDSeed after the
encrypted record is written, through the same CWalletDB so it shares
EncryptWallet's transaction. Erase returns true on DB_NOTFOUND, so a wallet that
was never written in plaintext is unaffected.

The erase is deliberately best-effort and only logs on failure. A hard failure
here propagates into CCryptoKeyStore::EncryptKeys, which EncryptWallet turns into
assert(false) with half the keys encrypted in memory; a warning is strictly
better than that.

Note this path is only reachable with -developerencryptwallet, which is
experimental and off by default on this chain, so this is a latent fix rather
than a live one.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
---
 src/wallet/wallet.cpp   | 31 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
 src/wallet/walletdb.cpp | 10 ++++++++++
 src/wallet/walletdb.h   |  5 +++++
 3 files changed, 42 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/wallet/wallet.cpp b/src/wallet/wallet.cpp
index fd2f31fed..5c63a319a 100644
--- a/src/wallet/wallet.cpp
+++ b/src/wallet/wallet.cpp
@@ -2523,10 +2523,33 @@ bool CWallet::SetCryptedHDSeed(const uint256& seedFp, const std::vector<unsigned
 
     {
         LOCK(cs_wallet);
-        if (pwalletdbEncryption)
-            return pwalletdbEncryption->WriteCryptedHDSeed(seedFp, vchCryptedSecret);
-        else
-            return CWalletDB(strWalletFile).WriteCryptedHDSeed(seedFp, vchCryptedSecret);
+        // Write the encrypted record, then drop the plaintext one. Both go
+        // through the same CWalletDB (and therefore the same transaction when
+        // EncryptWallet supplied pwalletdbEncryption), because CDB::Rewrite at
+        // the end of EncryptWallet copies every surviving record into the fresh
+        // file -- a leftover plaintext "hdseed" would keep the unencrypted seed
+        // on disk for the life of the wallet.
+        //
+        // The erase is deliberately best-effort: a hard failure here propagates
+        // into CCryptoKeyStore::EncryptKeys, which CWallet::EncryptWallet turns
+        // into assert(false) with half the keys encrypted in memory. A logged
+        // warning is strictly better than that.
+        if (pwalletdbEncryption) {
+            if (!pwalletdbEncryption->WriteCryptedHDSeed(seedFp, vchCryptedSecret))
+                return false;
+            if (!pwalletdbEncryption->EraseHDSeed(seedFp))
+                LogPrintf("%s: WARNING: could not erase the plaintext hdseed record; "
+                          "the unencrypted HD seed may remain in wallet.dat\n", __func__);
+            return true;
+        } else {
+            CWalletDB walletdb(strWalletFile);
+            if (!walletdb.WriteCryptedHDSeed(seedFp, vchCryptedSecret))
+                return false;
+            if (!walletdb.EraseHDSeed(seedFp))
+                LogPrintf("%s: WARNING: could not erase the plaintext hdseed record; "
+                          "the unencrypted HD seed may remain in wallet.dat\n", __func__);
+            return true;
+        }
     }
     return false;
 }
diff --git a/src/wallet/walletdb.cpp b/src/wallet/walletdb.cpp
index 478a5ec24..4f159f9a1 100644
--- a/src/wallet/walletdb.cpp
+++ b/src/wallet/walletdb.cpp
@@ -1335,6 +1335,16 @@ bool CWalletDB::WriteCryptedHDSeed(const uint256& seedFp, const std::vector<unsi
     return Write(std::make_pair(std::string("chdseed"), seedFp), vchCryptedSecret);
 }
 
+bool CWalletDB::EraseHDSeed(const uint256& seedFp)
+{
+    nWalletDBUpdated++;
+    // CDB::Erase honours activeTxn, so when this runs inside EncryptWallet's
+    // transaction the erase commits or aborts atomically with the chdseed write.
+    // It also returns true for DB_NOTFOUND, so erasing a record that was never
+    // written (e.g. a wallet encrypted at creation time) is not a failure.
+    return Erase(std::make_pair(std::string("hdseed"), seedFp));
+}
+
 bool CWalletDB::WriteHDChain(const CHDChain& chain)
 {
     nWalletDBUpdated++;
diff --git a/src/wallet/walletdb.h b/src/wallet/walletdb.h
index b3547a003..6f08c6018 100644
--- a/src/wallet/walletdb.h
+++ b/src/wallet/walletdb.h
@@ -222,6 +222,11 @@ public:
 
     bool WriteHDSeed(const HDSeed& seed);
     bool WriteCryptedHDSeed(const uint256& seedFp, const std::vector<unsigned char>& vchCryptedSecret);
+    //! Remove the PLAINTEXT hdseed record. Must be called once the seed has been
+    //! written in encrypted form: CDB::Rewrite (invoked at the end of
+    //! CWallet::EncryptWallet) copies whatever records still exist into the new
+    //! file, so a leftover "hdseed" leaves the unencrypted seed on disk forever.
+    bool EraseHDSeed(const uint256& seedFp);
     //! write the hdchain model (external chain child index counter)
     bool WriteHDChain(const CHDChain& chain);