Topic: Hardware wallet FUD (nonce attacks, unofficial firmware, etc) - page 2. (Read 282 times)

Nope. In my opinion hardware wallets make no sense to use. Completely unnecessary.

If you are going to hold, use a piece of paper.

If you are going to spend, use your phone.

If you are going to trade, well the exchange does the holding for you.

There isn't any need for a hw wallet in any of these situations.

So, in your opinion, an open source wallet on iphone/android is as safe (or safer) than a hardware wallet?

If we are security conscious, we are looking for something that would help our case with the problems that might occur when we are trying to use exchanges wallets or something. We all want to have that "our keys, our coins" mantra in our lives.

Providing air-gapped computers would be more expensive and a hassle than a hardware wallet. It would help if you made sure of the official site where you are getting your devices because this is where hackers can step in. I believe you need to be still careful every step because that's where they usually strike.

You know that the private keys won't leave your device, that's on HW, and that's the practice. It's a little secure device made for that specific purpose, and I think trusting the right companies that deliver exemplary service is crucial.

It's not overly paranoid, but it should still be investigated if there's something sketchy about it.

You can use electrum or a similar open source wallet on your iphone/android device too. It is not rocket science. They are pretty safe too. (not as safe as a linux pc but i would say pretty close)

If a person can't figure out how to use electrum, he shouldn't be using bitcoin anyway.

Bitcoin has an intelligence barrier. It is not for the absolute stupid.

The idea of a hardware wallet is to make it easier for non-technical people to use Bitcoin without exposing their private keys to the internet.

I have taught several friends how to use them and they learn quickly.

The same cannot be said with using Electrum or Bitcoin Core on an airgapped Linux computer. I can picture my wife's face while trying to learn this, she would be like "This is too much for me".

If you are going to just "hold", all you need is a piece of paper and a pen. Write down your keys/seed and here you have the most secure bitcoin wallet in the world.

If you are going to spend/send/receive coins every once in a while, then you need a linux PC with electrum (preferred) or bitcoin core. This route is also very safe.

I never get the idea of a hardware wallet. It is a business which solves a non-existing problem.

-Write down your name.
+But I don't have a pen.
-That's right mother fucker, I sell pens, now buy it.

^ Pretty much how it works with HW wallets.

A sensible person would have said:

"Why the fuck would I write down my name? Fuck off!"

*Btw you need a pen to write down your private keys.

In theory, indeed, there can be problems with HW - from things not implemented good enough to actual malicious intentions, especially in the case of closed source ones.
But in reality nothing has happened for so long, we can pretty much tell they've passed the test of time and, as you said, those calls are overly paranoid.

However, a new trend seems to be to be wary with the classical hardware wallets and go for devices like SeedSigner, where everything is open source (and you can even assemble it yourself). But this doesn't mean the HW are unsafe; as I said, they've passed the test of time and the companies seem to indeed care more to sell their hardware (and keep a good name) than stealing from people.

As I explain here, you only need to make sure the same nonce is not being reused and the nonce is not being generated deterministically - somebody might be able to crack open the ARM firmware of those hardware wallets and look for the relative lines to check - I'm an x86 buff and not an ARM one so I can't give advice on what specifically to look for, but if you don't see any syscalls to some random bytes function then that is a warning sign because that means the nonce isn't being generated from random bytes.

Hi everyone,

One of the main reasons I love Bitcoin is having peace of mind knowing that my money is safe.

Throughout the years, I have gone from using closed source hot wallets like Coinomi to using hardware wallets, running my own node and generating my own seed using dice.

Lately I've seen several users on Twitter that oppose hardware wallets heavily. They claim that the wallet manufacturers can eventually rugpull everyone and there's nothing we can do about it.

The argument is that there is no way for users to know that the firmware signed by the maker is the one that is actually running on the device (only that the device claims that its running that).

In addition to that, we might be leaking our private keys through our signatures because of malicious nonce generation. This means that everything appears to be fine to the user, but the attacker can scan the blockchain for signatures generated using these nonces and could potentially figure out our private keys. This is explained here: https://shiftcrypto.ch/blog/anti-klepto-explained-protection-against-leaking-private-keys/ and here: https://medium.com/blockstream/anti-exfil-stopping-key-exfiltration-589f02facc2e

I am no expert in these topics so this is why I came here.

Are these worries warranted? What are the chances of losing our bitcoin even if we do everything right: buying the wallet from official website, running our own node, generating our own seed, checking app signatures, etc.

If all of this is true and COLDCARD can suddenly rugpull everyone, what hope does Bitcoin have?

If using Bitcoin Core on an airgap device with Linux is what's needed to keep your money safe, how will this ever be adopted globally?

Are these FUDers being overly paranoid? Or are we all dumb for trusting hardware wallet companies?