31–40 of 52 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And 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.
The merchants who accepted the fraudulent credit card transactions don't get their money from Visa. So the merchants pay.
The 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…
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
Why 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 h…
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.
Nothing in this flaw is a surprise considering Trezor does not even use a secure element (unlike Ledger).
It’s surprising considering how cheap SIM card chips are. It’s not hard to do secure elements these days, at least at scale.
The 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…
To 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 chip…
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.
Trezor 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 reso…
This shows that assumption to be totally false.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People 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?)
Crypto 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?
Trezor 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 reso…
I 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To 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 chip…
As 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 is…
> if anyone has physical access it's game over
It's actually not when you use a series of common defenses that wipe the chip when tampering is detected. Of course it's still possible to determine the private keys via perfectly executed microprobing...but there's a huge difference here. Invasive attacks require significant time in very expensive laboratories per attack, which very well may fail.
Let's say managed to steal my wallet which leverages a secure element with tampering protection. If you're unaware that voltage/clock glitching will wipe the device, you may try and then you've lost. But let's say you're aware so you want to go the microprobing route. Do you have the necessary lasers and acids to get directly to the circuitry you want to read out without accidentally compromising the integrity of the top-layer sensor meshes? Do you possess a focused ion beam station (only costs ~500k USD)? By using this mesh I've made the extraction significantly more tedious and requiring far higher levels of precision for you. You've got my smart card, but I wouldn't call it "Game Over" by any means. Maybe in this amount of time I figured out that my wallet is missing.
This attack here on the Tresor, though, requires physical access but can be automated. Here, physical access really is game over. I would rate this issue as "Trezor shows themselves to be an inferior solution, will not use to store my keys"
Read here if you want to see more on techniques for readout and known countermeasures. https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/sc99-tamper.pdf
Nothing in this flaw is a surprise considering Trezor does not even use a secure element (unlike Ledger).