81–90 of 93 posts
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Did this actually happen?
Yes. He's now in a messy lawsuit over it. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-02/zuckerberg...
What a beautiful, fast website.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/3nkxh3/gemi...
They have a reassuring security page[0]. It's nice to see they're enforcing good practices, I especially appreciate their "no-link email policy" where they will never send you links in emails, which seems like a great way to head off phishing attempts. I hope they actually present this to users in some way during sign-up though, or it won't be of much help unless a user manually navigates to the security page and rea…
I don't understand Amazon's cloud HSM product. Amazon says they don't have access to your HSM but presumably they do if they wanted to. Also, how does HSM protect the hot wallet if an attacker is able to get access to a machine that is using the HSM for signing? Your only hope is that you can obscure the credentials for the HSM from the attacker. HSM for the hot wallet probably provides greater security than no HSM f…
> Amazon says they don't have access to your HSM but presumably they do if they wanted to.
I wouldn't be so sure. As far as I can tell, once you've provisioned an HSM from Amazon you have full administrator access. That includes control over all trusted SSH certs, users, etc. Of course Amazon has physical access, but that doesn't give them access to the HSM's crypto functions or the key material.
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I don't understand Amazon's cloud HSM product. Amazon says they don't have access to your HSM but presumably they do if they wanted to. Also, how does HSM protect the hot wallet if an attacker is able to get access to a machine that is using the HSM for signing? Your only hope is that you can obscure the credentials for the HSM from the attacker. HSM for the hot wallet probably provides greater security than no HSM f…
The value proposition of an HSM is that sensitive key material never leaves the hardware in plaintext (or at all, in the case of the SafeNet HSMs used by Amazon). An attacker who compromises a machine with access to the HSM is therefore able to perform whatever operations that machine is authorized to perform, but nothing more. Crucially, they cannot steal the key material and then go off and use it elsewhere. They h…
If Amazon is a bad actor they trivially have access to the HSM because they could just write some software that pretends to be the HSM. However, this is probably not in the threat model because the amount Amazon loses by fucking a client like this is much more than the amount they would gain by fucking a client. The real thread is rogue Amazon employees and I guess it would be be hard for them to MITM the HSM from the start.
Your only protection for the hot wallet is to obscure the credentials you use to connect to HSM. Good luck with that against and a determined adversary that has a lot to gain from dumping the HSM key. (if it is not clear this 'only protection' thing is when the adversary has root access to your machine)
Oh.. and if you are a gemini dev. Obscure your code encrypt your HSM credentials in memory. :) Security through obscurity is actually a useful thing against attackers.
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I personally know many of the engineers at Gemini and have worked with some of them in the recent past. If I were going to choose a team to build a bitcoin exchange, the people I know at Gemini would be on it. If you're into bitcoin, I think this is the place to put your money.
What benefit do they offer over something like Coinbase to a casual Bitcoin observer like me?
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The value proposition of an HSM is that sensitive key material never leaves the hardware in plaintext (or at all, in the case of the SafeNet HSMs used by Amazon). An attacker who compromises a machine with access to the HSM is therefore able to perform whatever operations that machine is authorized to perform, but nothing more. Crucially, they cannot steal the key material and then go off and use it elsewhere. They h…
The problem is that an attacker who compromises a machine that has access to the HSM will have the privilege to drain the wallet. Unless there is some rate limit or some higher access control the attacker will be able to initiate a bunch of BTC transactions that will dump the wallet. Also if they are intelligent about it they will batch the signatures and release them to the network in one hit. If Amazon is a bad act…
> If Amazon is a bad actor they trivially have access to the HSM because they could just write some software that pretends to be the HSM.
I believe SafeNet HSMs protect against attacks of this nature.
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The problem is that an attacker who compromises a machine that has access to the HSM will have the privilege to drain the wallet. Unless there is some rate limit or some higher access control the attacker will be able to initiate a bunch of BTC transactions that will dump the wallet. Also if they are intelligent about it they will batch the signatures and release them to the network in one hit. If Amazon is a bad act…
Good point regarding the outcome of an attack. > If Amazon is a bad actor they trivially have access to the HSM because they could just write some software that pretends to be the HSM. I believe SafeNet HSMs protect against attacks of this nature.
This is the perfect opportunity to hawk my own exchange because we should all have alternatives. http://bitcoinsexchange.itmustbetrue.com
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Good point regarding the outcome of an attack. > If Amazon is a bad actor they trivially have access to the HSM because they could just write some software that pretends to be the HSM. I believe SafeNet HSMs protect against attacks of this nature.
That is interesting. So does the device sign its communications with a public key signed by SafeNet?
> This manufacturer-validated devicee identification mechanism enables a strong trust model whereby customers can be assured that they are communicating with specific SafeNet hardware units in a way that cannot be spoofed.