7 ms·
Critical flaw in Trezor hardware wallets
- tmlee 7y agoNo hardware can protect itself from absolute physical compromise; perhaps a self-fuse burner when somebody tries to open it
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoWith the right systems in place, you can be protected from physical compromise. For example, if my credit card is stolen, I call visa and I'm fine.
- lostlogin 7y agoAnd who do you think foots the bill? You might not pay it in one lump sum, but I’m pretty sure you still pay it.
- wmf 7y agoPeople who lost 100% of their coins are probably wishing they had the option to buy some kind of insurance. But no, be your own bank. (Wait, don't real banks also have insurance?)
- Karunamon 7y agoCrypto is digital cash, not digital credit. If someone steals your physical wallet, you generally aren’t getting that cash back. Can we please dispense with this kind of hyperbolic nonsense?
- freeone3000 7y agoYou wouldn't carry large sums of cash on your person, so why are people considering large piles of cryptocurrency?
- literallycancer 7y agoPeople actually carry large sums in many places where credit cards aren't prevalent. Like Japan.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoThe analogy isn't credit. It's a bank. I doubt people carry much of a percent of their total Yen wealth in their pockets.
- zelly 7y agoThe merchants who accepted the fraudulent credit card transactions don't get their money from Visa. So the merchants pay.
- lostlogin 7y ago... and factor this into their pricing, completing the circle.
- tzumby 7y agoBanks store private keys for their ATMs in hardware security modules (HSM) and there are lots of crypto exchanges that started doing that. One of the features is private keys self destruct when tampering is detected. If you have a backup you’ll be able to recover the private key. While I agree that Trezor wasn’t designed with this in mind, I think it’s a good idea to include this feature. Not sure about the size requirements for that though, it might make the device significantly bigger.
- bob1029 7y agoSize requirements shouldn't be intensive, assuming it's a single-shot system. All you need is 128-256 bits worth of secret key data that is physically-destructible (e.g. with a high voltage spike). You then encrypt/decrypt the rest of the secrets stored in the device with this destructible key.
- dfox 7y agoTrue HSM with active self destruct needs to be constantly powered. On the other hand for many if not most applications, typical secure smart-card is is completely sufficient (and in fact typical POS card terminal stores most of it's long term secrets on SIM-like smart-card).
- numpad0 7y agoSomewhere in my junk parts bin is such a PCI card I bought out of a junk bin at Akihabara, that has Mitsubishi logo clearly printed with archaic construction overall, apparently marketed by NEC somehow, which product brochure page disappeared after I mentioned it on Twitter, Had a pair of blown AA battery for self destruction. I never bothered to get it working, but IIRC it was supposed to detect removal from PCI slot(the proper) to self erase. So it’s not rare or difficult.
- wbl 7y agoAt this years RWC someone fuzzed the software on the HSM. Keys came out.
- 7y ago
- quelltext 7y agoDoesn't the iPhone claim to be able to protect from physical access?
- rdl 7y agoTrezor is designed to protect against remote/logical attacks (including a compromised host). It isn't really hardware protected in any meaningful way against local access. This lets users inspect/validate their own hardware better, though. The issue is most users (reasonably, IMO) assume physical protection for their hardware wallets, at least against someone getting temporary access and without insane levels of resources. That is fairly safe using a Ledger today (barring an undisclosed vuln); that's why I think the Ledgers are somewhat better.
- qertoip 7y agoExactly. I would definitely pick Coldcard over Ledger though. Coldcard is open source and open hardware to a much greater extent, while still using secure element for secret storage and PIN counter. It also offers advanced security features like proper multisig support, airgaped operation, roll-your-dice entropy input, etc.
- sneak 7y agoI think people in practice buy these and use them thinking that they are secure against physical theft because of “encryption” and requiring a pin. This shows that assumption to be totally false.
- literallycancer 7y agoThe attack doesn't work if you are using a passphrase. I'm not sure why they let people use a PIN in the first place, but you should never be using PIN instead of a passphrase.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nnx 7y agoNothing in this flaw is a surprise considering Trezor does not even use a secure element (unlike Ledger).
- pat2man 7y agoIt’s surprising considering how cheap SIM card chips are. It’s not hard to do secure elements these days, at least at scale.
- Nextgrid 7y agoHave SIM cards actually been tested against these vulnerabilities? The payoff per card cracked is much lower than with crypto wallets so maybe there’s just no point trying these attacks?
- skunkpocalypse 7y agoSIM cards are not secure either, you can glitch them. The ones in phones and credit cards, that is.
- literallycancer 7y agoWhat makes you think the Ledger secure element provides any meaningful security?
- thinkloop 7y agoSome lucky people will be able to restore lost crypto.
- FatalLogic 7y agoThat really has happened. A legit owner used an old vulnerability to rescue $30,000 from a Trezor wallet when he forgot the pin. https://www.wired.com/story/i-forgot-my-pin-an-epic-tale-of-losing-dollar30000-in-bitcoin https://www.wired.com/story/i-forgot-my-pin-an-epic-tale-of-... Luckily he hadn't updated the firmware so the vulnerability wasn't patched on his device, but despite that, it took a long time and was not easy. But like this newer vulnerability, it would almost be impossible if he had also used a strong passphrase, as Trezor recommends.
- londons_explore 7y agoWhy don't all silicon chips have glitch and overvoltage detection? It would seem very easy to put a pair of fets in such a way they detected sudden voltage changes (via their gate capacitance). That could then be used as an input to a circuit which ensured the chip is properly reset by asserting the reset line for at least 1 clock cycle. This should probably be paired with brown-out detection, although that's power hungry, so I can see why people might not want it. This wouldn't only have security benefits - lots of electronic designs might be accidentally glitching their microcontrollers due to poor design of other circuits, and having the chip reset in a predictable way is much better than undefined behaviour.
- sschueller 7y agoProbably due to price. Some applications it doesnt matter if the chip can be glitched but getting them at a lower cost does matter.
- pjc50 7y agoBrownout detection is definitely one of those things to turn off for low-power operation. I suspect glitch detection is harder than it sounds, too.
- skunkpocalypse 7y ago> Why don't all silicon chips have glitch and overvoltage detection? Reliability. This is basically the microchip version of Boeing's MCAS. The circuit you describe is not only an analog circuit, but is in fact a noise amplifier. You're now shipping a chip containing a noise amplifier that drives the device-wide reset line. What could go wrong? The stuff you describe is very, very difficult to get right, and beast-mode insanely difficult to troubleshoot or even diagnose when it goes wrong. It's also very sensitive to manufacturing variations. So if there is a problem with the circuit, it'll probably only affect a few batches. Which, Murphy's Law and all, will be the batches that wind up in the hands of your most important customers. Stuff like this can bankrupt a chip company if you get it wrong, and there's no way to be sure you got it right. At most you put it in your super-high-end ultra-secure product line, so long as that line's sales are small enough that you can afford a recall.
- Ardren 7y agoThe original response about these type of issues [1] rubs me the wrong way In particular this statement: > That being said, we were surprised by Ledger’s announcement of this issue, especially after being explicitly asked by Ledger not to publicize the issue, due to possible implications for the whole microchip industry, beyond hardware wallets, such as the medical and automotive industries. As I understand they are using a standard STM32 chip for these wallets, and relying on it's basic protection. Companies make real processes designed for securely storing data, why aren't they using them? Instead they are suggesting that there is no alternative and everyone is vulnerable to this style of attack. Edit: I missed some of the backstory. They don't mention that option as their competitor (who found the security issues) already uses a secure element, like a sane person. [1] - https://blog.trezor.io/our-response-to-ledgers-mitbitcoinexpo-findings-194f1b0a97d4 https://blog.trezor.io/our-response-to-ledgers-mitbitcoinexp...
- mistahenry 7y agoTo me, this is full admission of a complete lack of security competency. Building a hardware wallet without using a smart card or some other secure element that at least has mitigation’s against voltage/clock glitching, detects light, reduces the ability to measure power consumption, etc is negligent. Either they don’t know how to design secure solutions or they wanted to use cheaper chips since tamper resistant chips cost more. Neither is a good look
- logicallee 7y agoAs most on HN know, if anyone has physical access it's game over - so when I read "critical flaw" in the title to me that meant remote key extraction (or similar remote flaw), and since there's nothing remote about this I consider it a clickbait article. No, what has been written up is not "critical". physical in-person key extraction after literally opening up a piece of hardware and glitching its exposed innards isn't a "critical flaw". it's baseline expectation. I would rate the issue raised in the article as "not a bug, won't-fix." with the explanation that "Physical key extraction will always be possible regardless of anything we do." or are people here claiming that their "better" competitors (who are using "better" hardware, more "correctly") are immune from physical attacks? EDIT: I am keeping this even if it gets voted to -4. I don't believe a physical, local (in person) glitching attack on the innards of a device, which requires physical access and opening it, constitutes a "critical" vulnerability on a hardware cryptographic device.
- paulpauper 7y agoThis may seem bad but how many people have lost crypto because of this? You are more likely to have your crpto stolen when transferring crypto to your trezor when setting it up.
- rohanagarwal94 7y agoEvery wallet is physically hackable, that is why we are building Cypherock where we introduce a second variable that is locations using Shamir Secret Sharing on the private keys. I would love to have the opinion from the community on it - https://cypherock.com https://cypherock.com.