From: Peter Todd <pete@petertodd.org>
To: Aiqin Li <liaiqin.lanzhou@gmail.com>,
Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
<bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardware Wallet Standard
Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2016 17:14:07 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20160817001407.GA6571@fedora-21-dvm> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <0501f5c2-611c-53c1-5fd1-d4da5ba5137b@gmail.com>
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On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 09:36:02AM +1000, Aiqin Li via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Out of curiosity, what is the technical reason a normal ECC-enabled
> smart-card cannot be used for the hardware signing component of a wallet
> app? (Since if it can, its standardization must have been discussed.)
>
> Debian wiki gives a list of such cards with related opensource software to
> access them.
I'm not aware of any ECC-enabled smart-cards that can sign the specific curve
that Bitcoin uses, not to mention the fact that those smartcards generally only
speak higher level protocols than raw signature generation, precluding the
signing of bitcoin transactions.
The other serious problem - and this is a problem with smartcards in general
anyway - is that without Bitcoin-specific logic you're just signing blindly; we
recently saw the problems with that with the Bitfinex/BitGo hack. And even
then, without a screen most of the hardware wallets in are still just signing
blindly, with at best hard-to-use limits on maximum funds moved
per-transaction. Also note how even hardware wallets with a screen, like
Trezor, aren't yet able to authenticate who you are paying.
--
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-08-17 0:14 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 26+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-08-16 14:10 [bitcoin-dev] Hardware Wallet Standard Jonas Schnelli
2016-08-16 14:48 ` Pavol Rusnak
2016-08-16 15:13 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-08-16 15:21 ` Pavol Rusnak
2016-08-16 17:48 ` Jochen Hoenicke
2016-08-17 0:25 ` Thomas Kerin
2016-08-17 7:24 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-08-17 7:40 ` Nicolas Bacca
2016-08-17 10:13 ` Dana L. Coe
2016-08-17 11:34 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-08-17 17:06 ` Marek Palatinus
2016-08-18 6:54 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-08-18 9:15 ` Marek Palatinus
2016-08-18 9:35 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-08-18 9:43 ` Marek Palatinus
2016-08-18 9:49 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-08-18 10:23 ` Nicolas Bacca
2016-08-24 10:31 ` Thomas Kerin
2016-08-16 19:22 ` Luke Dashjr
2016-08-17 0:03 ` Thomas Daede
2016-08-16 23:36 ` Aiqin Li
2016-08-17 0:14 ` Peter Todd [this message]
2016-08-17 7:27 ` Nicolas Bacca
2016-08-17 18:36 ` Bryan Bishop
2016-08-22 16:50 ` Moral Agent
2016-08-28 23:14 ` Corey Haddad
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