Topic: They say hardware wallets are the safest - page 4. (Read 1101 times)

I see hardware wallet as flash drive that you store any valuable and important information, hardware wallet is much more safer than any online or offline wallet in storing your funds, all you need do is store your hardware wallet in a safe and secure place where you will remember, as long as you didn't misplace your hardware wallet you have nothing to fear.

Now this means that I always have to save the copy of my private key somewhere safe at all times because the bitcoins from the hardware wallet are also not recoverable.
But this also jeopardize the safety of the hardware wallet as already there is a copy of the private key out there outside the wallet so higher chances of the funds being stolen. I guess the problem of storing the private key more securely also arises now since we know that the hardware wallet can also stop working at any time or any mishap can happen.

Hardware wallets from Software Wallet provide the most secure way to store your cryptocurrency. ensuring that you never have to worry about your tokens being hacked or stolen. Even if your computer is hacked or your wallet is stolen, the thief will be unable to transfer your coins without knowing your passphrase.

Additionally, if you want to lose your hardware wallet, you can always recover your currency in a new wallet. If you want to search cryptocurrency for a long time and ensure maximum security, the way to protect hardware wallets is to protect, it is recommended that coins should not be stored in any exchange wallet for extended periods of time.

Both had risk and it all depend on the owner of the wallet may hardware wallets or online wallets. If i will be holding great amount of crypto then of course will be having a hardware wallet because there are reports of hijacking especially to dxchanges where we could also consider the deposits as wallets.

However having hardware wallets means that would be more safer as it could also be a problem especially in keeping password or private keys one may able to loss it and that would be a disaster.

To avoid problems in the future with wallets then back up should be done so as to give assurance that you may be able to retrieve it again whe  you'll going to need it.

As for me, a rather controversial issue.

That's true, a hardware wallet is a safest and secured wallet for me because you are not prone from attacks when you are using hardware compared to online wallets, what we really need to keep the distance is to hackers and hackers are commonly occurred through online transactions, so if you are using an online wallet, you are prone from many attacks from hackers because they will tet to gain access on your account, not like to hardware wallet which they cannot do things to have access on it, the bad thing on using the wallet is when you forgot where did you place it or it has broken.
That's right, your seed is one of the important things to keep, you have to keep it on your self and never teel to anyone, including your friends.

LMFAO!

Well, yeah, if you insist, they're more or less the same thing. The only difference is just that 4-letter word, hard vs. soft. You are saving on a hardware rather than on a software. And yet there is a huge universe of difference between a hardware and a software and the security they imply.

No doubt about that. Cryptocurrency hardware wallets are the safest form of wallets you can come across in this industry. Saving your digital assets on a hardware wallets provide a 99.9% security against it from being hacked by hackers. Mobile wallets are not all that safe as someone can equally exploit a bug in the application and that can make you lose your entire funds totally.

Are you doing this on a permanently airgapped computer (i.e. one which is never connected to the internet) with a clean install of an OS? You've just said "download Winrar", which makes me think the answer is no. To add your private keys to an encrypted archive they must first exist on your computer in plain text. Malware can copy those keys and transmit them to a third party now or at any point in the future when internet access is re-established.

There is a reason that every good wallet tells you to back up your seed phrase non-electronically by writing it down on paper.

Not so. If your software wallet is lost or stolen, then for the majority of cases it will be significantly easier for an attacker to extract your private keys than from a hardware wallet.

I had a software wallet on a dedicated offline machine for many years without any problems and believe that an offline computer is as safe as a hwardware wallet, provided that you don't have random people living in your house. People who can mess with your hardware is always a dangerous situation for everyone in it, finances, trading, you name it. If your belongings are exposed, like in a dorm room, running anything, be it a hardware wallet or an offline PC is risky, but a hardware wallet will offer more protection in such case.

I will prefer to read Binance academy article about What Is a Hardware Wallet (and Why You Should Use One). When you will read this article then you will have realized why should you use hardware wallet. I don't want to argue or describe in details, but holding your crypto in a good hardware wallet is safer than any online or software wallet. Its because private keys aren't revealed and store into secure chip. Most pros is hardware wallet always in offline. If you can't safe your device, seed and private keys by yourself then any wallet isn't safe for you. Lost device or damage doesn't mean you lost your fund, you are able to recover by using another device or software always by seed phrase.

That's in case something happens with your hardware wallet which causes it to be broken and, you are in need of your balance from that wallet to use it for other things or important matters. You can still retrieve and take your funds even your hardware wallet is broken through Electrum.

Well, he said if the hardware wallet 'stops working' so I assume it could be broken due to a circumstance.

You can do that as long as you have the recovery phrase from your hardware wallet, you can use that with Electrum.

Lol, disk failure... From every place you've saved it? Play lotto.
If you saved it only on your pc then yeah, it is likely, but we're talking about PCs, laptops, external disks and whatever offline store of storage you have.

The protection of hardware wallets is much better. It is in a much better position than software wallets. Hardware wallets keep your money safe at all times. Even if you lose your wallet, your entire money will be perfectly safe.

I guess the OP says that if you don't have the backup of the wallet then you are dead, well that's with every wallet out in the market as well, if you are using the software wallet then also you are prone to attacks and your funds can easily be stolen by a hacker or the person having physical access to your wallet as compared to a hardware wallet where funds are more secure than a software wallet and always is password protected by default.
Also I didn't knew about the importing of key from a broken hardware wallet to electrum wallet, should it be from a backup or we can also extract the key from the broken hardware wallet??

You got it entirely wrong as far as I am concerned. Hardware wallets are not downloadable. They're literally pieces of hardware.

If you're referring to apps such as Ledger Live, these are just wallets to check balances and initiate transactions with the HW. You could use a lot of other apps and sites, including Waves DEX, Binance, Electrum, Magnum Wallet etc. There is no need to save anything anywhere besides the seed your Ledger shows during the first-time setup. You just write that seed down and store it somewhere safe.

Private keys are usually not scrapped from the Ledger for security reasons. As long as you have the seed, it's enough to recover all your balances.

Even with a compromised computer, the HW is known to be safe - while the PC's screen might fool you, the hardware wallet's won't. If the PC is infected so that the transactions only show to be correct while in reality the destination wallet is a thief's, your hardware wallet will always show the real destination one and requires your physical input to confirm or decline the transaction.

But besides checking wallet balances, you basically need the wallet the entire time. You have to confirm addresses, transactions etc using it.

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Disk failure. I always fear that scenario. Another concern I personally have is that a vulnerability might be found someday for encrypted archives and my money would just suddenly be transferred into another wallet just because I held my seed/wallet.dat in an archive and someone got in touch with it. I don't trust digitally stored personal stuff.

That is in case you lose your hardware wallet like you said and cannot purchase another one for replacement. You can simply recover everything using your seed, or just buy another wallet. Ledger has 3 PIN tries before it automatically resets, so in case you lose it you'd need someone who knows what a Ledger is who also knows an unknown physical vulnerability in order to have it compromised. Otherwise, you could lose 10 HWs with the same seed on them all and you'd still be perfectly fine.

@o_e_l_e_o
And what bad do encrypted text files have? Like txts in rars. In a PC that no one ever touched you download Winrar and add to archive the csv file of the private keys. You put a very strong password that can remember. And you save it to different places with a name that isn't suspicious.

@Darker45

So.. Same thing with software wallet? But you have to be careful.

@sunsilk
And why would you like to import your seed to electrum since you have the strong hardware?  

I only know the basics, and I am not as deep as our veterans here. 
So I will just use that.

A hardware wallet is downloadable or you could just save a clear copy if you want to. The .exe file or whatever it is that had not been used yet.
That means, you could use it offline if it is saved in a flash drive.
Create your address, save your private keys and seeds without the need of the internet.
It's better if your seeds are written in a piece of paper.

Now, your computer is compromised.
You just use the flash drive to open the hardware wallet again. Note: You haven't input your seeds yet. It is still in that piece of paper.
Enter that while offline then Voila! you can access your account again.

You don't really need the hardware for the whole run.
You just need it in the starting line and finish line.

I would lie to prove you are wrong, but this time you are right, even a EMP can destroy those hardware wallets. And tons of vulns and exploits have already been developed for that kind of wallet.

The 100% secure wallets don't exist, there is always a way to vuln the system, some of them are a little more secure but that doesn't make it not vulnerable.

No, you are not.

You probably don't know that you can import your seed from a hardware wallet to an Electrum wallet. To easily understand it, you can easily connect your wallet from that hardware even if it's broken with the use of Electrum wallet.