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Grand Theft Crypto, Episode LXXVI
New week is here, time for new culture war happening is here. Maybe it belongs to finance thread, but both cryptocurrency and cryptocrime are now inseparable part of our culture.
Coldcard Hardware Wallet Flaw Linked to $70 Million Bitcoin Theft in 41 Minutes
Yes, safe crypto technology had proven to be unsafe once again. Follow the links in the article for more nerd details.
Why is this important? This time, this not due any fault or slip at the user side - their only mistake was trusting the professionals of Coinkite business operating since 2013 and considered one of the best by everyone in crypto.
Bitcoin is not to blame, Bitcoin worked as intended. The random numbers generated by Coldcard were not random.
Little parable for non nerds to grok what is it all about:
Now, what are lessons of the episode?
1/ Another proof that crypto hadn't brought world peace and harmony as some more devoted fans promised, but crypto made crime cool again. Grisly, retarded and boring ordinary everyday crime stays, but evil genius was conjured from pages of pulp novels to reality.
2/ Trust no one. If you want to make you crypto stash really secure, you need to make your own random number generator, this means using the gold standard of physics, radioactive decay. No randomer random events can be found in this universe.
Too much work? Say good bye to crypto and invest in white powder. What you put in your nose, no one can take away from you ever again.
edit: links
Using a passphrase ("13th word", or 19th or 25th etc) in addition to the shitty random number would have kept them safe, right?
I don't know, but I was thinking of something similar. If (1) in addition to your lengthy crypto passkey consisting of a long random number, you also need to enter a simple one word password; and (2) you get only one try every 5 minutes, it seems like it would be far harder for people to steal your money.
It's a similar principle at work with ATM cards. A thief needs both the card itself and a simple 4 or 5 digit code. Neither of these is an insurmountable barrier, but combining them makes it exponentially harder to get into the person's bank account.
Anyway, I'm not an expert on computer security so I wouldn't be surprised if there were something important I were missing. But that's how it seems to me as a layman: That it's preferable to condition access to the account on two reasonably challenging obstacles as opposed to one obstacle which you believe to be super-duper challenging.
That's been possible for a long time. Choosing a pass phrase is optional when setting up these hardware wallets
But... Reportedly, even someone who had chosen a pass phrase for their buggy Coldcard got their account emptied. Hmm. Maybe the hackers ran some simple brute forcing on the accounts they couldn't get straight into?
That's good to hear.
I have very little knowledge about computer security in general or this situation in particular, but it seems to me that the solution is to have a delay on password attempts. e.g. if you get your password wrong, you have to wait a minute to try again. After the second failed attempt, you have to wait 5 minutes. After that, 10 minutes. After that, an hour. It seems to me that this would make brute force attacks extremely time consuming.
Also, after a couple failed pass phrase attempts, the account holder could be texted and emailed so that he has an opportunity to lock down his account.
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