6 ms·

While this is flatout insane, it does not speak toward crypto's security directly. If you personally decide that you want a company to hold your crypto that's y

While this is flatout insane, it does not speak toward crypto's security directly. If you personally decide that you want a company to hold your crypto that's your decision and a poor one at that. You have the ability to create your own wallet and hold your funds in it securely. Some exchanges like Coinbase even have wallet apps so the transition is super easy to make.

krunck 4y ago
And then there are the M of N keys schemes where one can have multiple parties holding the keys. Example: Three keys, any two can sign transactions. You have one somewhere safe(in a safe) and one on your hardware wallet. And the bank has one for your account. The bank can't do anything without you also signing the transaction. You can always sign transactions on your own with both your keys.
themagician 4y ago
Wallet "apps" are not secure. It's an illusion of security. Unless the source is open AND verifiable there is no reason to trust it more than trusting FTX. I 100% guarantee that there will be a major hack, from a major app, at some point in the future where it turns out that all seed generation was not in fact random. Honestly, it's probably already happened multiple times and they just haven't gotten caught. Those stories where people claim that all their crypto got stolen even though they never shared their seed—you know the stories that everyone always dismisses as, "You must have let someone else see it." Well, some of those are probably true. When you generate a private key through an app you are 100% trusting that the person who published that version of that app did not do something trivially easy like decide to generate all seeds from a known incremented input. You'd never know. And if that person caught caught internally the company is far more likely to cover it up, because otherwise they will collapse overnight.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  I've never heard of a crypto wallet that was not open source. The coinbase one certainly is. That doesn't mean there won't be hacks and backdoors though. You also need to build them from the codebase yourself if you want to be completely sure that you're running the code that's visible (though maybe there's a better way to verify this with Android/iOS apps?)
  - themagician 4y ago
    How do I know the code running on my iPhone is the same as what is on Github? I don't. There is every incentive for someone to cheat here. There is very little risk, and the potential reward is basically infinite. I can slip a few lines of code in that grant me access to every wallet generated. Worst case I get caught and fired. Best case no one ever knows. Assuming your employer isn't in on it and you get caught, what are they going to do? Seriously, think about it. If they acknowledge this in anyway the company is OVER. The best course of action is fire you, push a new release and just pray that you don't drain the wallets of the victims in a way that raises too much suspicion. You either generate seeds from source you audited or maybe trust a hardware wallet that has been sufficiently audited. App-based wallets get new releases on a daily basis. The security is a joke.
    - SparkyMcUnicorn 4y ago
      I agree there's a problem here, but the verification problem exists for every app on your iPhone that isn't released by Apple. Maybe I'm just clueless, but what solution could exist to verify that the code running on your phone doesn't differ from a given codebase (that also can't be faked)? We can build Brave for any platform, which happens to have a wallet, but there's still no way of knowing whether what I built matches what's on the apple store. At least on Android there's F-Droid, which builds and releases from the source. Seems like that's as close as we can get to user-friendly and verifiable right now. My solution is Safe[0] with multiple signers (different software/hardware for each one). Probably overkill, but when you are your own bank... [0] https://github.com/safe-global https://github.com/safe-global
      - pcthrowaway 4y ago
        One more thing you can do is audit the source code of open source projects you use, and build them yourself where possible. For example, Metamask is source-available and you can add it to your browser from the git repo rather than the chrome extension store. You can also add it from the chrome extension store and inspect the source to ensure all files match the build, before adding any private key material to it. I was arguing in a comment recently[1] that browser extensions should be required to be source-available, and the chrome store should take a role in verifying the bundle matches the build process defined with the source code. It's alarming to me that this is not already the state of things, but as it is it perverts incentives for extension developers to a horrific degree. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34892991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34892991
- nullc 4y ago
  > from a major app, at some point in the future where it turns out that all seed generation was not in fact random. Honestly, it's probably already happened multiple times and they just haven't gotten caught Bitpay's "copay" wallet used only 64-bits of randomness for the nonces in their signatures, making it trivial to recover the user's private keys. That wallet was "open source" -- but it doesn't much matter if its open source if no one competent is reading or reviewing the code. They never announced the vulnerability-- they fixed it and the person who introduced it quietly parted ways with the company (he surfaced again later as part of conman Wright's team, ... I'm not sure if that increases my estimate the the vulnerability was intentional or if it was just incompetence).
- cypress66 4y ago
  It has always been recommended to use hardware wallets, and software wallets are considered highly insecure. You can get a trezor which is open source.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

krunck 4y ago

And then there are the M of N keys schemes where one can have multiple parties holding the keys. Example: Three keys, any two can sign transactions. You have one somewhere safe(in a safe) and one on your hardware wallet. And the bank has one for your account. The bank can't do anything without you also signing the transaction. You can always sign transactions on your own with both your keys.

themagician 4y ago

Wallet "apps" are not secure. It's an illusion of security. Unless the source is open AND verifiable there is no reason to trust it more than trusting FTX. I 100% guarantee that there will be a major hack, from a major app, at some point in the future where it turns out that all seed generation was not in fact random. Honestly, it's probably already happened multiple times and they just haven't gotten caught. Those stories where people claim that all their crypto got stolen even though they never shared their seed—you know the stories that everyone always dismisses as, "You must have let someone else see it." Well, some of those are probably true. When you generate a private key through an app you are 100% trusting that the person who published that version of that app did not do something trivially easy like decide to generate all seeds from a known incremented input. You'd never know. And if that person caught caught internally the company is far more likely to cover it up, because otherwise they will collapse overnight.

pcthrowaway 4y ago
I've never heard of a crypto wallet that was not open source. The coinbase one certainly is. That doesn't mean there won't be hacks and backdoors though. You also need to build them from the codebase yourself if you want to be completely sure that you're running the code that's visible (though maybe there's a better way to verify this with Android/iOS apps?)
- themagician 4y ago
  How do I know the code running on my iPhone is the same as what is on Github? I don't. There is every incentive for someone to cheat here. There is very little risk, and the potential reward is basically infinite. I can slip a few lines of code in that grant me access to every wallet generated. Worst case I get caught and fired. Best case no one ever knows. Assuming your employer isn't in on it and you get caught, what are they going to do? Seriously, think about it. If they acknowledge this in anyway the company is OVER. The best course of action is fire you, push a new release and just pray that you don't drain the wallets of the victims in a way that raises too much suspicion. You either generate seeds from source you audited or maybe trust a hardware wallet that has been sufficiently audited. App-based wallets get new releases on a daily basis. The security is a joke.
  - SparkyMcUnicorn 4y ago
    I agree there's a problem here, but the verification problem exists for every app on your iPhone that isn't released by Apple. Maybe I'm just clueless, but what solution could exist to verify that the code running on your phone doesn't differ from a given codebase (that also can't be faked)? We can build Brave for any platform, which happens to have a wallet, but there's still no way of knowing whether what I built matches what's on the apple store. At least on Android there's F-Droid, which builds and releases from the source. Seems like that's as close as we can get to user-friendly and verifiable right now. My solution is Safe[0] with multiple signers (different software/hardware for each one). Probably overkill, but when you are your own bank... [0] https://github.com/safe-global https://github.com/safe-global
    - pcthrowaway 4y ago
      One more thing you can do is audit the source code of open source projects you use, and build them yourself where possible. For example, Metamask is source-available and you can add it to your browser from the git repo rather than the chrome extension store. You can also add it from the chrome extension store and inspect the source to ensure all files match the build, before adding any private key material to it. I was arguing in a comment recently[1] that browser extensions should be required to be source-available, and the chrome store should take a role in verifying the bundle matches the build process defined with the source code. It's alarming to me that this is not already the state of things, but as it is it perverts incentives for extension developers to a horrific degree. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34892991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34892991
nullc 4y ago
> from a major app, at some point in the future where it turns out that all seed generation was not in fact random. Honestly, it's probably already happened multiple times and they just haven't gotten caught Bitpay's "copay" wallet used only 64-bits of randomness for the nonces in their signatures, making it trivial to recover the user's private keys. That wallet was "open source" -- but it doesn't much matter if its open source if no one competent is reading or reviewing the code. They never announced the vulnerability-- they fixed it and the person who introduced it quietly parted ways with the company (he surfaced again later as part of conman Wright's team, ... I'm not sure if that increases my estimate the the vulnerability was intentional or if it was just incompetence).
cypress66 4y ago
It has always been recommended to use hardware wallets, and software wallets are considered highly insecure. You can get a trezor which is open source.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]