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Topic: Secure Element in Hardware Wallets - page 7. (Read 3511 times)

legendary
Activity: 3500
Merit: 6320
Crypto Swap Exchange
March 25, 2021, 07:30:37 AM
#54
...
When we are talking about Chips or Microchips we are actually already talking about a set of components, all the time.

Exactly what I was thinking. Much like what I was saying is that someone took an established CPU design and then just added what you would normally see elsewhere on a board and combined it all onto 1 die package. Made for a smaller board and only put on what they needed.

-Dave
legendary
Activity: 1624
Merit: 2481
March 24, 2021, 07:49:36 AM
#53
This is impossible to have today as secure elements are simple and stupid with only one purpose, so we need to have two chips for this to work.

It is not impossible per se.
A single chip itself is a set of electronic circuits. And it is not abnormal for a chip to have several sub-components. It is very well imaginable that one of these sub-components can be a secure element itself.
That's like a "bigger" chip being made of "smaller chips". Nothing too uncommon.

When we are talking about Chips or Microchips we are actually already talking about a set of components, all the time.
hero member
Activity: 761
Merit: 606
March 23, 2021, 01:47:41 PM
#52
Quote
Good news is that Trezor team is making their own open source secure element that will be a gamechanger compared with all solutions we have at the moment.
There will be no need for secret NDAs and closed source bs.

That really sounds good to me!
legendary
Activity: 2212
Merit: 7064
March 22, 2021, 08:44:13 AM
#51
Was thinking about something similar the other day and this probably unworkable thought came into my head.
And entire secure wallet on a single chip. Create some custom spun chip with everything you need on the one chip.

Would eliminate a few attack vectors, but might add some more.

Was watching a youtube video about a company that built a custom piece of hardware for medical data pad for harsh environments, was essentially a custom android tablet with a HDMI connector but EVERYTHING was in 1 chip. RAM / ROM / Flash Memory, CPU, video processor, etc all in the one chip.

Any thoughts?

This is impossible to have today as secure elements are simple and stupid with only one purpose, so we need to have two chips for this to work.
Some wallets like Trezor or Jade have only one chip but they don't have secure element.

Good news is that Trezor team is making their own open source secure element that will be a gamechanger compared with all solutions we have at the moment.
There will be no need for secret NDAs and closed source bs.
legendary
Activity: 3038
Merit: 4418
Crypto Swap Exchange
March 22, 2021, 08:28:28 AM
#50
And entire secure wallet on a single chip. Create some custom spun chip with everything you need on the one chip.

Would eliminate a few attack vectors, but might add some more.

Was watching a youtube video about a company that built a custom piece of hardware for medical data pad for harsh environments, was essentially a custom android tablet with a HDMI connector but EVERYTHING was in 1 chip. RAM / ROM / Flash Memory, CPU, video processor, etc all in the one chip.
Probably won't help much, if at all. There isn't any proprietary secure elements being produced by any hardware wallet manufacturers. Designing one and manufacturing them would probably make the cost of one skyrocket, not to mention that smashing that many components into a single chip isn't common at all.

Communication between secure element and the MCU should be encrypted and if anything were to be extracted. AFAIK, some MCUs actually wipe their memory on bootup, even if the user doesn't do a clean shutdown. Would be better to just use a SE that allows for transactions to be signed within that, so keys are never sent out of it.
legendary
Activity: 3500
Merit: 6320
Crypto Swap Exchange
March 22, 2021, 06:15:50 AM
#49
...
When you sign a transaction on device with ATECC608A, secret needs to be moved to other stm32 memory chip, sign a transaction and then secret should be cleared from stm32 memory...

Was thinking about something similar the other day and this probably unworkable thought came into my head.
And entire secure wallet on a single chip. Create some custom spun chip with everything you need on the one chip.

Would eliminate a few attack vectors, but might add some more.

Was watching a youtube video about a company that built a custom piece of hardware for medical data pad for harsh environments, was essentially a custom android tablet with a HDMI connector but EVERYTHING was in 1 chip. RAM / ROM / Flash Memory, CPU, video processor, etc all in the one chip.

Any thoughts?

-Dave
legendary
Activity: 2212
Merit: 7064
March 21, 2021, 11:36:45 AM
#48
One small update regarding secure element chip ATECC608A that is used in ColdCard, BitBox and Passport hardware wallets.

This secure element is mostly used by Amazon and it is good for their services, but let's say it is not very smart when we are talking about Bitcoin and it doesn't know how to create a Bitcoin signature.
When you sign a transaction on device with ATECC608A, secret needs to be moved to other stm32 memory chip, sign a transaction and then secret should be cleared from stm32 memory.
That means that secret is leaving secure element and this can in theory be abused by some attackers in future, but something like this has not done so far.

This can probably be applied to some Infineon secure element chips that Amazon uses, but I can't be totally sure about that.
There is a lot of room for improvements in using secure element chips in hardware wallets and I expect next few years will be very interesting for inovations.
HCP
legendary
Activity: 2086
Merit: 4363
March 03, 2021, 04:49:25 PM
#47
Full source report is very interesting to read. (archive)
The ending slayed me!
Quote
... this device will be a viable alternative to the Ledger and Trezor, with a much nicer UI that seems likely to be further improved.

Which is a shame, because the one I have appears to be non-functional and in pieces.
Bwhahaha... Cheesy Cheesy Cheesy


I love the way people think "outside the box" (if you'll pardon the pun Wink) like this:
Quote
I took my Vault to my local Veterinarian, and asked them to XRay it for me.
Shocked Shocked Shocked That's genius!
legendary
Activity: 2212
Merit: 7064
March 03, 2021, 09:31:32 AM
#46
Interesting update regarding Cobo vault hardware wallet after I asked them to provide identification for their secure element, and they refused to do it.
Nick Johnson opened, bypassed their tamper protection mechanism and examined it's inside with secure element.
As main chip they are using Mediatek MT6850 but they lasered off identification marks from secure element chip in effort to hide this information from people!
Nick managed to enter criteria in supplier database and came up with potential candidate MAX36010-BSN-T  as security supervisor from Maxim.

We can't be 100% certain, but I am updating information and adding this as probable secure element for Cobo vault.

Common Cobo, you can't hide things like this forever  Cheesy



Full source report is very interesting to read. (archive)

legendary
Activity: 2212
Merit: 7064
February 10, 2021, 06:41:43 AM
#45
Wookong Chinese hardware wallets also have secure element but it is currently one of the lowest graded EAL4+ chip from all known hardware wallets.
I could not find and verify what exactly microchip they are using but on their website they claim it is fully secured and not half secure like Ledger wallet, but not much data or explanation is provided.
Everything looks closed source in this case, and I would stay away from this product.

One more hardware wallet added is Hashwallet with EAL 6+ Infineon SLE78 secure element.
Similar Infinion chips manufacturer is used for Secux, Keevo and Jubiter hardware wallets.
legendary
Activity: 2212
Merit: 7064
February 09, 2021, 07:11:59 AM
#44
Added one more hardware wallet ImKey that claims to have EAL 6+ Military-grade CC security chip, but I can't find much information about it and it's not possible to confirm exact chip model and manufacturers.
Looks like it is made in China and their twitter social media account is not active since 2019, and having secure element does not have to mean that hardware wallet is better or safer than other wallets.
jr. member
Activity: 36
Merit: 10
January 30, 2021, 11:37:13 AM
#43
I just came about this open source project based on SmartCard-HSM called smartbtc

smartbtc
http://smartbtc.eu/index.html

the SmartCard-HSM smartcard hardware manufacture
https://www.smartcard-hsm.com/features.html
legendary
Activity: 2212
Merit: 7064
January 26, 2021, 06:45:25 AM
#42
Added new hardware wallet Tangem with EAL6+ Samsung SecureCore microchip and like all other manufacturers they say their chip is the best Smiley
They have open source software development kit for their android and iOS mobile devices:
https://github.com/Tangem
legendary
Activity: 2156
Merit: 1151
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
January 08, 2021, 08:26:10 AM
#41
Interestingly, phishing websites almost never ask you for your passphrase, only for 24 words of your seed phrase.
That could be an intentional thing. The passphrase is considered an advanced feature. That means that newbies and those that don't feel comfortable enough to experiment with passphrases most likely don't have one either. It also means that if you know what a passphrase is, and you took the little time that is needed to set one up, you are unlikely to be gullible enough to insert your seed phrase in a fake wallet.

agree on this, it is for complete newbies, they could enter their seed phrase in fake wallet, if you done some research, you should probably know that you should not do that
with that said, when I created my first block.io account, I did this because BTC wallets seem so complicated to use, and web wallet was easy to use, and these days I also think that ETH and tokens have much more user friendly usage and experience in wallets (no matter type) than BTC, maybe that is due to nature of the system, or the way the BTC records transactions, but I find it really hard to call me familiar for everyday use, while for ETH the process is linear, or that is just the matter of habit
legendary
Activity: 2730
Merit: 7065
January 08, 2021, 05:24:51 AM
#40
Interestingly, phishing websites almost never ask you for your passphrase, only for 24 words of your seed phrase.
That could be an intentional thing. The passphrase is considered an advanced feature. That means that newbies and those that don't feel comfortable enough to experiment with passphrases most likely don't have one either. It also means that if you know what a passphrase is, and you took the little time that is needed to set one up, you are unlikely to be gullible enough to insert your seed phrase in a fake wallet.
legendary
Activity: 2464
Merit: 4419
🔐BitcoinMessage.Tools🔑
January 08, 2021, 05:01:11 AM
#39

Hard to imagine someone would enter their SEED but it happens!

Interestingly, phishing websites almost never ask you for your passphrase, only for 24 words of your seed phrase. That means if you have set up a passphrase, you will not fall victim to these scam attempts. Scammers are stupid enough not to consider additional security levels users may have. The combination of seed phrase plus passphrase will likely be more robust than secure elements plus 24 words (no passphrase) when it comes to phishing attacks. In short, secure elements don't protect against phishing, while a simple combination of passphrase and scammer's stupidity does.  Grin
hero member
Activity: 761
Merit: 606
January 07, 2021, 04:46:34 PM
#38
HCP,

Hard to imagine someone would enter their SEED but it happens!
HCP
legendary
Activity: 2086
Merit: 4363
January 07, 2021, 03:44:56 PM
#37
The "other guy" with a closed source controller/element has had numerous instances of theft happening with phished app's etc....
And in how many of those cases were the funds lost because the secure element was breached? HINT: zero Roll Eyes

In every single case, the end user broke the golden rule and entered their 24 word recovery phrase into a fake website and/or app instead of only entering it on the device itself. It could just as easily happen to someone connecting to a fake "trezor.wallet.io" website. Which has also happened before.

Secure Element or not... open source or closed source... All the "security" in the world will be useless if you simply hand over the recovery phrase. Tongue
legendary
Activity: 3038
Merit: 4418
Crypto Swap Exchange
January 06, 2021, 04:19:36 AM
#36
We should not trust any devices that contain secure elements either, we can't rely on SE because the information stored in these elements can be obtained in other ways. For example, hackers don't need to get physical access to our SIM card, instead, they can easily convince mobile phone employees to clone the SIM.
That is because your SIM Card contains the information required to authenticate with the cell towers. Operators can permit an alternate SIM card to use your number but that doesn't mean that the SIM card has failed it's purpose. It's primarily purpose is to resist any bruteforce attacks to get the keys and CMIIW, most modern SIM card bricks itself during a bruteforce attacks.


Our payment cards have all sensitive information written on them, which makes them vulnerable to phishing, hacking, stealing, etc. If you were to lose it or get robbed, you wouldn't rely on SE to protect your funds, you would block your card instead thus making it completely useless.
The secure element on a debit card is used to protect against cloning attacks. It is difficult to clone the chips in an EMV cards while it is easily to clone the magnetic stripe cards. The scenario that you present isn't the point of EMV cards in the first place, it's designed primarily to combat swiping attacks. When I lose my hardware wallet, I trust that the secure element can resist the attacks until I can transfer my funds out.

The one time you can rely on the secure element is when the information that you need is inside the secure element itself. There is no one else to do social engineering to get the information within the SE unless the owner chooses to reveal it himself. When used properly, the secure element will not reveal the information held within and that is it's primarily purpose inside a hardware wallet, and inside a sim card, payment cards etc. For the scenario as stated, HW wallets containing SE still provides an additional layer of security.
legendary
Activity: 2464
Merit: 4419
🔐BitcoinMessage.Tools🔑
January 06, 2021, 03:36:48 AM
#35
Sure you can do that, but then you should also not trust any devices that exist today including smart phones, sim cards, SC cards, or payment cards that all have secure elements in them.
Secure elements are not exclusive only for hardware wallets.
We should not trust any devices that contain secure elements either, we can't rely on SE because the information stored in these elements can be obtained in other ways. For example, hackers don't need to get physical access to our SIM card, instead, they can easily convince mobile phone employees to clone the SIM. Our payment cards have all sensitive information written on them, which makes them vulnerable to phishing, hacking, stealing, etc. If you were to lose it or get robbed, you wouldn't rely on SE to protect your funds, you would block your card instead thus making it completely useless.
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