It has long been accepted that one of the safest places to keep your cryptocurrency holdings is a hardware wallet. These are small, portable devices that encrypt your keys and offer a little more peace of mind than keeping your coins in a software or internet wallet. .
But of course, as we know, nothing is certain.
And Kraken Security Labs reminded us of this when they showed us how they bypassed all the protections of a popular wallet, the Trezor, to sell and decrypt its seed.
It’s worth noting that the hack requires physical contact with the wallet, but it only lasts about fifteen minutes. And by “physicalArray” we mean that the hack leaves the device absolutely mutilated. The Kraken team started by desoldering the wallet’s core, an STM32 processor. Then they put it in a socket of an interface card and started creating problems.
The hack relies on an attack known as voltage glitching. Essentially, at a precisely-timed moment during the device’s boot sequence, the supply voltage is fluctuated. This enables the chip’s factory bootloader, which can read out the contents of it’s onboard flash memory. The memory is read-protected, but can be accessed 256 bytes at a time through a second voltage glitch. Neither of these attacks work 100% of the time, so if the device fails to boot or the memory remains locked, the FPGA performing the attacks simply tries again. After enough iterations, the Kraken team was able to fully dump the chip’s flash memory.
There’s another hurdle: the sale of memory is encrypted. Enter the raw forcing. Trezor devices allow a maximum PIN duration of nine digits, however, if the average user’s PIN is assumed to be only 4 digits, an automated script can be guessed in a matter of minutes. A longer PIN can even be drawn up in a matter of days or weeks, in fact, within the realm of possibility. This affects the seed, which at that point can be seized in a new hardware wallet to borrow all the cryptocurrency assets that were on the original device.
So, aside from some engaging hardware hacking techniques, what can we learn from the work of the Kraken Security Lab?First of all, for all designers, the STM32 is not suitable for high-security applications. For all end users, this doesn’t mean you throw away your Trezor (although this is rarely the first wallet trick we’ve seen). That means you want to keep it away from other people, and you want to allow the BIP39 passphrase, which Kraken claims can protect opponents. on the attack. Perhaps most importantly, it reminds us all that nothing is one hundred percent certain.
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15 minutes?? Alone???? ??????
Funnily enough things like this make it more likely I’d “trust” one… on the “what happens WHEN it breaks??” level.
“Don’t drink your Ovaltine”?
I would never allow physical access to my gold, valued at $2,000 an ounce. . . similarly, I would never allow physical access to my Bitcoin hardware wallet. Either way, it would be much harder for a thief to withdraw my Bitcoin than it would be to withdraw my gold.
Isn’t it intended to have a separate security detail on such devices?If I read this article correctly, Trezor doesn’t use a security detail (like Ledger does), but sells the keys in the microcontroller’s flash memory where only the coverage is read. Disable the fuse that gently passes through a voltage problem. If so, this device is not very suitable for storing cryptocurrencies compared to Arduino.
Yes, it’s you. Or use an MCU intended for this application of a general-purpose MCU.
What style do you offer????
It’s not that simple. These “secure” elements are not open source and apply security through obscurity. You will need to sign an NDA to access the data needed for development.
The creators of Trezor created an open-source wallet, knowing that it is still useful because the vast majority of attacks are done through malware and not physical software. In addition, they allow users to choose another passphrase to protect the wallet. It makes sense regardless of the hardware, because at the end of the day, any hardware can contain bugs.
You may prefer a different security model but their model is still reasonable.
It would be interesting to know if there are any attacks occurring on the f7 and h7 chips because if I do it correctly some of them can be encrypted.
I think the key bit of information, which is unforuntately missing from the summary, is if you password is 9 digits how long will it take to break?
If four digits take 2 minutes, five digits take 20 minutes?So nine minutes would equal a little less than 14 days (2 minutes * 10^4).
Because with a hardware wallet, the concept is good, if you realize it’s missing, you know you’re in trouble. Two weeks is probably the minimum time in which your absence can be realized. In practice, as many other people as possible will leave them. unattended for even longer.
I think for most people, the biggest threat is forgetting where they kept their wallet/hash/etc. , or forgetting the passphrase/password/PIN. That’s an odd component of all this: centralized currency means that professionals at a bank or other establishment worry about the maximum security of their accounts. With cryptocurrencies, the user is guilty of their own security decisions.
“With cryptocurrency the user is responsible for their own security choices.”
Well, now everything will be fine.
At least we probably wouldn’t have to pay ransoms.
This means that you can use the one from an organization that can hack into your wallet if you lose your password. . . Yes?
Wow
The Safepal wallet would self-destruct if you tried this. I love it so far. The only problem is that it’s not open source. But it has a drawback.
This attack vector can be mitigated by using a passphrase in Trezor. Passphrases are apart of the seed itself and hence can’t be bypassed this way.
Also, this was posted almost a year ago by Kraken, why the repost now?
Paper and seeds in your mind
Never use a paper wallet. Or do you accept it as true with the paper wallet generator and its printer?
Well I was recently hacked and they got 1.2 million dollars. So how do I get it back or hack it back.
Did you have it online or in an offline wallet?Do you know who hacked it? If you’re in an offline wallet, was it hacked while connected or away from a communication device?The main points will be answered by assistance.
We find this paragraph:
“Here’s one more hurdle: the memory frame is encrypted. Enter the raw forcing. Trezor devices allow a maximum PIN duration of nine digits, but if you assume that the average user’s PIN is only four digits long, you can guess that it is an automated script. in a matter of minutes. Even a longer pin can be crafted in a matter of days or weeks, in fact, within the realm of possibility. This affects the seed, which at that point can be saved in a new hardware wallet for good tracking. Borrow all the cryptocurrency assets that were on the original device.
Where in we find this: “This yields the seed, which could then be entered into a new hardware wallet to effectively steal any cryptocurrency assets that lived on the original device.”
MY QUESTION: Is “the seed” the list of 24 words for healing?And then, is the following accurate?
“,,, which could then be entered into a new hardware wallet” — ?
Put another way, presuming it’s a hardware wallet issue and not a theft issue, is the list of recovery words plus another hardware wallet all that is needed to recover your cryptos? (
Words plus ANY wallet (even software)
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