Topic: IRS now wants to Hack Hardware Wallets - page 3. (Read 604 times)

Biden should concentrate on building a quantum computer then only its possible to hack the wallets.

Tax evaders should be worried about it but its time for the crypto billionaires to move out of the USA or else they have to pay 70% of their asset value for tax and penalty or even they have to pay it completely.

Yeah good luck cracking my seed, suckers. More evidence that the gov are getting envious & desperate.

Typically, a backdoor would allow unauthorized access. Someone who is not the owner of the wallet and does not own the seed or pass phrase would be able to bypass all security and have access to the contents of the software. In an open source system anyone would be able to see the backdoor which was put and avoid using such applications, this is not the case if it is closed source.

The government is not relenting in their efforts to identify Bitcoin users and transactions, so Bitcoin users should not compromise on safety and privacy.

Yeah, privacy should be human right, but then again it's hard dilemma for regulators when people are using privacy to escape regulations. You might get away it for a while, but more money you are trying to hide, more difficult that's going to get. And i don't think that there's a real consensus yet how this right to privacy should be handled, because even regulators want privacy, but they also want a possibility to audit. I am looking at combination of RegDeFi and zero knowledge proofs to combat this.

Because no one want lack of privacy in the end. We need to build an opposite system for china's trackable currency. We need to be a good altervative for oppression.

Tell me they are not after hacking your wallet passphrase?

So in the none open source wallet the backdoor is to pass the wallet seed to a third party? Or what else information they are after. And if they are after such information then how would one differenciate them from a bad hacker?


Goverment can put pressure and they do everything to get their job done. Maybe some company will sell their ethics for more money but those who are into true bitcoin they will never sell their idology. We need to be more careful when we are chosing our wallet and handling our crypto.

Maybe some of you read the news that came out few days ago how Biden is going to hire more people to work for IRS to make better tax enforcement and people will have to pay him $80 billion in extra funding for that.
News came out that IRS recently launched Operation Hidden Treasure for tracing cryptocurrency transactions and detecting people who are avoiding to pay taxes for undeclared cryptocurrency gains.

What is Biden administration going to do with all that money collected from people?
IRS or Internal Revenue Service is now looking for help to hack cryptocurrency hardware wallets (Trezor, Ledger, Coldcard and others) and they released must read 25 pages long PDF document in March 2021 named:
Performance Work Statement Criminal Investigation Development of Exploitation Techniques Against Cryptowallets.
In this document IRS Digital Forensic Unit admits that hardware wallets have become very secure and they need solutions and reusable tool to hack wallets, because they may have them in possession from various cases but can't break them.

This means that it is very important to have open source hardware wallets because backdoors can much easier be implemented in closed source wallets and ''secure elements'', and we may even see some new or existing hardware wallets secretly being founded by IRS in future.

Trezor wallet posted on Twitter that this is oppression of citizens and attack on individuals rights to privacy, and I would agree with that:
https://twitter.com/Trezor/status/1387863392984182787

Remember to always protect your hardware wallets with passphrases and multisig solutions and learn how to protect from $5 wrench attacks or if done by government it is called Go to Jail card.


source document