Topic: I am panicking - page 2. (Read 338 times)

Wouldn't it be easier to just send the coins to a new wallet so that you don't have to worry about the old seed?

First of all, I'd like to point out that the video (and the attack) are very old and discussed on this forum already.

Since you can't pull the storage chip off the wallet, in my opinion you should never sell a hardware wallet (reset or not, doesn't matter). It's simply unsafe. Always assume that a 'wiped drive' can be at least partly restored, in most cases.
The only reason where I'd say it should be fine is if you overwrite a HDD with a few passes.

That's because SSD controllers are smart and don't allow us to e.g. overwrite specific cells (unlike a HDD that goes from start to finish), and a lot of consumer hardware, like smartphones doesn't even allow to unmount the main drive and mount it on another machine / OS to fully wipe it.

Hence I say: unless we're speaking of a HDD in an off-the-shelf PC or laptop, that you can wipe with multiple passes, don't rely on the device's data being permanently deleted.

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Honorable mention: if you have some sort of full disk encryption going on (like many Apple devices), in theory tossing the keys (which is what happens when hitting 'wipe' on those) should suffice. But since I can't check how they do their encryption, I wouldn't trust sensible data to that mechanism.

Certainly don't trust Bitcoin seeds to a 'wiped' storage medium that is not a HDD which you know you wiped (overwrote) fully from start to finish multiple times.

Anything that stores data. This is the reason I don't claim warranty on hard drives.

Formatting is like replacing the index page in a book. The rest of the data is still there.

Pretty much.

Yeah, they are small. Usually just a screw or two and pop it out. Just make sure you don't have more than one drive!

Which would obviously destroy the hardware wallet, since you won't be able to insert a fresh storage chip.

Obviously not if they managed to recover it. I was assuming in your hypothetical situation you had the seed phrase and could recover the coins to another wallet. If your broken hardware wallet is your only link to your coins then obviously don't destroy it in case someone can figure out a way to recover your data.

It is still possible to recover the data. As I said above, you need to write over the whole drive with junk data.

I went to a hardware shop to consult with an expert to understand basics and suggestions. According to him there are no reason for me to panic. If I want to recycle a laptop then I can just take the SSD the storage component and sell the device or throw away without any worry. In my imagination I was expecting a huge box connected to the motherboard but when I saw the size of it I was surprised, it's even smaller that those RAMs back in 2000s 😂

He does not have much knowledge about hardware wallets but in general according to him there should be a storage and I need to destroy it for safety if the device is not in use.

On the video the wallet device was not destroyed then?

Formatting the entire drive means wiping out everything in it or still it is possible to recover data using proper data recovery tools?

For the vast majority of hardware wallets, there will be no way for the average user to access its storage directly and encrypt whatever you have stored on it. Further, resetting the device and putting a new seed phrase on it does not guarantee that the old one is permanently erased.

Any good hardware wallet will prevent the average user executing arbitrary code on it.

For either of these approaches, you are looking at stripping down the wallet to access the necessary hardware directly. Once you've done that, you can't really give it to someone else, and no one else should want to accept it.

In the case of PC wiping, you can simply use any software that wipes the entire hard disk with a Gutmann 35-pass algorithm, so that tere is no chane for the data to be read except for possibly a very powerful electromagnetic reader that is only available at data recovery labs, and are most likely very expensive. The average user isn't going to bother with that hassle right after bying a used PC.

Since the hardware wallets technicaly use a linux-like operating system, you could theoretically send commands to it using some library such as libusb that executes a wipe of the hardware wallet storage devices.

I think for giving away a hardware wallet to someone you might not trust to try to find your funds, just find a way to encrypt the data so they can't decrypt any that's left and then wipe the device and put new data on it. (you can put something like a randomly generated private key in the passphrase box as you normally don't need the passphrase to erase a device and you've got proof it should be secure then too - mnemonics are hard to use as passphrases have length limits).

If you burn an entire device (hardware wallet or computer) you might not be sure you've actually destroyed the data. If you instead just remove solid state drives, hard drives and sd cards from the device that no longer works and burn/keep safe/destroy that, you'll be a lot safer and won't be burning things that work and can be used again/recycled.

Any permanent storage devices, which will usually be HDDs or SSDs. However, just because the desktop doesn't work doesn't necessarily mean your storage drives have failed. You can probably strip them out and use them in another machine instead.

Probably not. Wiping a drive doesn't actually delete the data on it, it just tells the OS that the data is unneeded and it can be written over whenever needed. Unless you actually write over the data though, then it still exists after being deleted. There are pieces of software out there which will write junk data to your hard drive to make it safe, but the best option is simply to remove and keep/destroy the hard drive and sell the laptop without it.

If it doesn't work anymore, then what do you have to lose by destroying it?

Impossible to answer because it depends entirely on the hardware wallet, and most probably haven't been audited or examined thoroughly for such an attack vector. Safer not to, just as its safer not to use a hardware wallet given to you by someone else.

I just saw this video. He hacked the hardware wallet and restored the seed. Goosebumps experience for me.

Consider, I created a bitcoin wallet. I have back up seed stored in physical form.
Situation 1. My desktop has broken and I can no longer use it. Which part of the device I need to burn to destroy all information from it or keep for safety.
Situation 2. I am not going to use the laptop anymore, I have reset my windows to remove all files. Is it safe to sell it or give it away to someone to use?

Consider, I have a hardware wallet and seed is backed up safely in physical form.
Situation 1: The hardware device is not functional anymore. Should I panic and burn it to destroy the data completely?
Situation 2: How safe it is to hand out a used and reset hardware wallet to someone else who does not know the seed I had for it?

How the fuck I never considered to think of these before?