Comment by TacticalCoder
19 days ago
No matter whether you like or hate or don't care about cryptocurrencies, this is incredible stuff...
Now basically: every single attack that's been described as "theoretical" or "far-fetched" or "only existing in the mind of a paranoid person" did actually happen.
We're talking here about a tiny eSIM implant and a little CPU doing OCR on the fonts appearing on the hardware wallet's screen to read the secrets during set up. So the secure element ain't tampered with.
Not long ago the Coldcard hardware wallet had an issue where it'd fallback to a 32-bit only RNG that could be cracked and so many people got their coins stolen.
Now it's Ledger that sees tampered devices all around the world (in Asia for sure but now there are reports about reseller in the EU selling backdoored/eSIM'ed devices).
For people who own Bitcoin at this point one of the only thing kinda sensible to do is to use multisig schemes, like 2-of-2 or 3-of-3 multisig, where your split the secret over two or three different hardware wallet brands (meaning being able to sign a 2-of-2 wallets requires hardware wallets from two different vendors).
When Ledger hardware wallets came out and people said that seed (the list of words) could be intercepted and relayed by a channel bypassing the computer (here by using an eSIM), people would post explaining that people were nuts if they thought such an attack could be pulled off.
Yet here we are.
And Ledger is responsible for very poor security practices: for example it's impossible to use a Ledger hardware wallet in a fully airgapped/offline way. For you're forced to not only upgrade the firmware but also install the Bitcoin "ledger app" (or whatever that is called) after you entered your seed into the device.
Which is complete and total amateur hour.
In addition to that Ledger offers a service to "backup your seed": what could possibly go wrong with that uh?
I'm betting that we'll soon hear about hardware wallets getting drained due to the seed being exfiltrated through "randomness" in how transactions are built/signed (aka "kleptography").
And it's not just representative about people in the cryptocurrencies ecosystem: people simply don't understand computer security and don't understand the potential attacks nor the length at which attackers are willing to go to steal data/funds/ruin other people's lives.
At this point we've heard about chips' plans being modified before the chips are even built (only to lower the entropy of RNGs) [unrelated to cryptocurrencies btw], a worldwide backdoor attempt in SSH, eSIM sending secrets from hardware wallets with tiny attack surfaces.
You're not anywhere near paranoid enough.
It speaks a lot to the power of financial incentives. As soon as there's money in it, every conceivable attack to get that money has been tried. Which also mimics what happens in market economies: once there is money in it, every conceivable industry springs up, even things that are absurd or harmful. And money appears to be more powerful than things like laws or governments, in that things that are illegal but profitable happen, while things that are legal and unprofitable do not.
In some ways this is kinda encouraging, because it means that even in cases where society collapses and the government disappears, there are really only two fundamental technologies needed to reboot everything: money and contracts.
I kind of get what you're saying, though I'm not sure how much value money would have without a government to back it up. This is true even for cryptocurrencies. If society collapses and I can't convert to some fiat currency, I don't think I'd trade a bitcoin for six slices of bread.
The incentives lead us toward the classic "Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders." scenario.
https://www.insidehook.com/culture/story-tom-toro-new-yorker...
A currency can arise from any fungible, tradable, generally-durable commodity that the bulk of society decides to accept as being worthwhile. In prisons cigarettes often fill that role; in pre-agrarian hunter gatherer groups it's often little baubles like shells. Government isn't necessary for this, but social contract is. You need to have enough faith that your neighbor will accept the currency to accept it yourself.
Cryptocurrencies have the advantage that they can be spent worldwide, instantaneously, with little friction, while most commodities require that you be physically present to exchange them. They're also significantly easier to store and more resistant to garden-variety theft, as long as they're secured by passphrases. But they exist in the uncanny valley of requiring electricity and Internet. It is fairly unlikely that the government collapses and yet you still retain always-on electricity and Internet. What will you use to pay the electric company, and how do you enforce the contract that they keep providing you power?
There's perhaps an interesting role for a digital cryptocurrency that does not require always-on connectivity, eg. something that can be carried over SneakerNet for local transactions, and then automatically syncs up with the global system when the community regains Internet connectivity. In actual conflict zones today, people seem to get intermittent electrical & Internet connectivity, eg. the electricity will come on for an hour a day with rolling blackouts, and then you try to get everything charged in that one hour. And there are enough solar installations out there that several communities are likely to retain significant power even in the event of a societal collapse. But current crypto's consensus mechanisms aren't built for intermittent connectivity: you'd need to build and design something that is eventually consistent, where a weeks-long fork does not result in two competing cryptocurrencies.
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> I'm not sure how much value money would have without a government to back it up.
You don't need a government backed paper currency, you need a mint making precious metal coins. History has several examples like the mints at the Potosí silver mines or those by the East India Company that enabled trade without effective governments to back them up by just providing reliable coinage that spread to many other polities.
As long as there isn't some crazy inflationary force like colonizers arriving with an unlimited supply, we can use something as simple as beads or seashells for currency quite fine. It just means more labor overhead to create that currency in the first place.
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"Currency without government" can and has existed, though you could argue circularly that whatever can "issue" a currency is a government of a kind.
How something comes to be is distinct from how it is used.
Blockchain consensus rules are isomorphic to governments and your selection of a chain is basically voting. Cryptocurrency isn't independent of governments - it's just invented its own kind.
> It speaks a lot to the power of financial incentives
Also, to the power of modern-day cryptography that rubber-hose and evil maid (backdoors) are the only viable (even if expensive) alternatives.
> the government disappears, there are really only two fundamental technologies needed to reboot everything: money and contracts
Both of which require "governance", but post-collapse, it may be of form that may not benefit the collective.
It doesn't demonstrate the security of cryptography, just that entities exist with sufficient skill and knowledge for supply chain attacks but lacking cryptographically relevant mathematics.
It doesn't prove the hardness assumption, if it did we could trot forward any toddler and ask if it knows the factors to some RSA product, and "prove" hardness assumption for factoring integers...
The two most important fundamentals are agreements (contracts) and the ability to enforce them (that is, to seek redress) - as in: law enforcement.
A high trust society. Everything else is downstream of that.
Sir Terry predicted this, in his C. M. O. T. Dibbler character[0].
I was just thinking about click fraud, and how I'll bet that a significant number of clicks on sites are now being driven by simple (they don't need to be too complicated) LLMs.
[0] https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Cut-Me-Own-Throat_Dibbler
>that things that are illegal but profitable happen, while things that are legal and unprofitable do not.
I'm not sure. I want to say there's volunteering, charities, clubs, religions etc. But those all need resources (time, energy, money) put into them to remain viable. I suppose if something is unprofitable it means the resources (money or not) are drained faster than they go in, and the entity dissolves.
Money is a contract, so I guess its just contracts all the way down.
After the Hezbullah pagers incident, the basic assumption has to be that every possible supply chain attack you can think of is realistic.
It’s always been said that if Mossad is your adversary you are already fucked. But for a some crypto thieves to operate at this level this early is a bit surprising to me. If you had asked me last year to predict when this would happen I probably would have given this year significantly less than 50% probability.
Buying your hardware wallet from random 3rd party no-name distributors in China is kinda asking for trouble, isn't it?
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I think you're vastly underestimating the sophistication of players that target this scale of theft when you make it easy by using an infrastructure designed to be preyed upon.
Banking systems exist such as they do with the regulations that they do for a reason.
I thought it was Israel who did the pager bomb attack, not Hezbollah?
Israeli attack on Hezbollah.
I consider my phone compromised and will not do banking on it at all. The rest of the world is living in blissful ignorance that will burn them some day.
They are liable to the consumer but they can get their money back from their supplier in turn. As long as you only sell stuff sold to you by someone reputable you can get money from, it should be mostly fine.
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Why don't we see more theft using banking apps on compromised phones in highly developed countries? Also, if you online banking, what platform is safe enough for you?
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Hezbullah and a few innocent civilians. It was pretty messy.
And yet, you could point that out to lots of people that place hardware in extremely sensitive locations and they most likely won't believe you because to do so would require a lot of prepwork. And right next door sits a few hundred million worth of gear...
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I bought my first ledger hardware wallet circa 2017 (If I recall correctly). At the time, they shipped it without any anti-tamper packaging, and even had a note bragging about how it didn't matter, because of how their devices were set up. I forget the exact wording, and would be interested if anyone here has it. Anyways, at the time I was doing hardware hacking for 3-letter agencies, and decided to not use ledger devices when I saw they weren't too concerned with their supply chain.
I bought directly from ledger. I don't know if they were assembling devices in house at the time or not.
Edit: further context, this discussion is somewhat relevant to how confident they were. See the OP's remark about what ledger said: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/ssycjn/my_l...
> Now basically: every single attack that's been described as "theoretical" or "far-fetched" or "only existing in the mind of a paranoid person" did actually happen.
It's predictable: The ROI of attacking cryptocurrencies in this manner is high enough to make expensive attacks worthwhile. It doesn't make other expensive attacks on typical end-users worthwhile, and they remain far-fetched.
"that's been described" is the important part of that statement
Ah, but typical end-users is only one class of targets, industry is another and there the pay-off can be substantial.
This is a big part of my problem with crypto and why I'm bearish on it breaking through to normies. Traditional financial institutions just seem so much safer all in all, not to mention having far better UX.
The big thing traditional institutions give you is logs of everything. Sure if I get your account number I can take all your money - but there are traces of that and so it is easy to arrest me after the fact.
Don't give out your account numbers, there will be a lot of hassle should an evil person get it. However you have a reasonable change of getting your money back in a couple years. (this is also why you get warning about some countries - a few will not cooperate with traces and so the money is lost)
> Don't give out your account numbers
Is that a US thing? In Europe, companies have their account numbers on their letter heads and websites, and people are quite comfortable giving out their account numbers.
https://www.quelle.de/service-hilfe/bezahlung-finanzierung/k...
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There's also the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (in the US).
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The reason why traditional works is the fraud can be reversed. If money is stolen from your accounts, as long as you are not the cause, in most cases the institution or govt will make you whole.
It is reinvented by 'crypto' in the form of 'subjectivity' (as opposed to the hard objectivity of 'your keys your coins' and the absolute acceptance of all objectively (though perhaps fraudulent or thieving) valid transactions.
One example of subjectivity is if, and this happens, a bug is found which can drastically increase the supply of coins beyond the intent of the creators; everyone comes together and removes those state transitions manually despite their objective validity. A more practical notion would be some type of "this transaction was fraud, someone has authority to reverse it." Of course, this is a hard tradeoff, but users should be able to make it.
The traditional banks are not better than crypto for receiving and sending money, specially when it comes to international transactions.
The only thing they are better is providing security in an easier way.
Is Wise considered traditional or not? Also, Revolut? Those two come to mind when I think about easier/cheaper international transfers.
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I think it also encourages us to rethink specialized and hardened advices versus general ones.
The same attack on every desktop and laptop would be... significantly harder.
> not to mention having far better UX
Yeah, it is totally great to have to set up a different account for every service, then having to do AML and KYC, and then having your account suspended for no apparent reason. So great that international transfers takes days and tens of dollars in fees, if they succeed at all. So great how a large part of the world‘s populace is denied access to the global financial system. Great as well how centralized it is, so things go down when there are technical problems at your bank. Absolutely awesome how Canada was able to freeze bank accounts of people who donated to the ”wrong“ cause.
They totally have it figured out, we should stop looking for alternatives. We already have the perfect system for the ages. Anybody who even tries is delusional.
I'd argue that if used properly that crypto is more secure than most banks.
Here "if used properly" is lifting so heavy it can be used to move Mount Everest.
It can't be more secure if you have no recourse after you're hacked.
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argue it
So explain why the Winklevoss twins store their crypto secret words in bank vaults?
I'll give you a little hint - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
> Now basically: every single attack that's been described as "theoretical" or "far-fetched" or "only existing in the mind of a paranoid person" did actually happen.
I think it's good to remember this is always the case. Attacks on tamper evident seals are commonly called "theoretical" or "lacking value" in practical terms, but recent customs evasion using counterfeit seals in the US shows that to be untrue.
Heck, The Wire had an arc about people bypassing customs tamper-seal tags.
> When Ledger hardware wallets came out and people said that seed (the list of words) could be intercepted and relayed by a channel bypassing the computer (here by using an eSIM), people would post explaining that people were nuts if they thought such an attack could be pulled off.
Every single time I thought maybe people on the internet know what they're talking about, I've been proven wrong. The internet is for entertainment purposes only.
The only educational exception has been people who weren't exactly posting on the internet, such as the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting videos or Stanford lectures.
There's a lot of grief can come from it, so I try and read this poem often. [0]
[0] https://gladdestthing.com/poems/ed
> people on the internet
This is not a homogenous mass...it also keeps changing. The internet is just a medium. It's like saying people writing books know what they talk about. Doesn't make sense. Anybody can write on the internet or write a book
That's true. What I really mean to say is, people with worthwhile things to say don't usually say them only on the internet, whereas people who didn't put any thought into what they are saying often do solely post their opinion on the internet, and that I prefer to look at higher effort output compared to internet posts as far as information is concerned. My point isn't about denouncing "people of the internet", but rather, the median quality of opinions on the internet. And the poem, of course, is about who is ultimately accountable.
I remember seeing a TV program[1] where the UK govt had proposed some hare-brained key escrow thing (this is circa 2000 ish) and they had an expert on to discuss it. Well they didn’t mess around. The expert they had on to explain the drawbacks of the scheme was Whitfield Diffie[2] and he was up against some government contractor slug in a suit. Anyhow Diffie explained that there is essentially no security measure that is effective if you create a prize of infinite value. If the prize for circumventing security is great enough, it will be possible to use money to get around whatever security.
[1] “Newsnight” on BBC
[2] As in Diffie-Hellman etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitfield_Diffie
I don't get hardware wallets that have you enter the key on another device. Or don't show the transaction on the hardware device's screen, with every destination and amount, with a button to confirm on the device. Or trusting a wallet to generate a random seed. Or not using the most entropy possible (e.g. 24-word seed). Anything less is dropping the ball.
? Ledger devices are exactly what you’re describing: the key stays on the device, you don’t enter it anywhere. Transactions are confirmed on the small screen + button on device and it displays sender and receiver of a tx.
The root cause of this attack is that the typical cryptocurrency wallet operational model involves the key leaving the device in plain text as part of the setup/backup process. Such a thing is impossible on any normal correctly configured HSM (while creating backups is possible by some sort of multi-step process where the secret key material never exists in plaintext outside the security boundary, how exactly that is done differs significantly between vendors).
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> So the secure element ain't tampered with.
Back in the day, RSA SecurID hardware tokens were completely physically sealed, with no room for a backdoor. Tampering with them in any ways destroys them or makes it physically obvious. That's a physically secure design. This Ledger thing looks more like a consumer toy.
Not to contradict your point, but in 2011 RSA's SecurID backend servers were hacked. TOTPs require shared secrets, and their server had all the secrets to the SecurID keyfobs they managed. Security is hard.
Yep that was a flawed design. Modern ones (ex. Token2 Programmable) are identical but allow burning your own seed, while tampering destroys it.
Was that a nation state-level attack?
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Anything about RSA SecurID hardware tokens always makes think about the guy who used a web cam and OCR to read token LCD screen.
https://smallhacks.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/reading-codes-fr...
I always wonder to what degree these omissions are really accidents. There must be some fraction where 'the hacker did it' was baked in from day #1. Not saying that that is the case here but I've seen some pretty questionable stuff that is supposedly very secure (bank security tokens for instance), where there was ample space left in the devices and no anti-tamper measures beyond the case being glued shut. Some even have replaceable batteries for convenient access to the interior right behind the keyboard.
It's not doing OCR on the screen, it's intercepting the pixel data that comes unencrypted over the SPI bus that connects the CPU to the display.
The idea reminds me somehow of bank card ATM skimmers from old times like this one (2009): https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/heres-what-a-car...
> And Ledger is responsible for very poor security practices: for example it's impossible to use a Ledger hardware wallet in a fully airgapped/offline way.
How would this have helped here? The attackers included the radio. Most people don't have a faraday room at their disposal.
> For you're forced to not only upgrade the firmware but also install the Bitcoin "ledger app" (or whatever that is called) after you entered your seed into the device.
> Which is complete and total amateur hour.
How else would you incorporate protocol updates into your wallet? Although I do agree that it shouldn't be necessary to install these unless absolutely necessary to continue interacting with the blockchain network in question.
Would love to hear people's thoughts on this excerpt from the Epstein files in light of these disclosures:
--------------
From: Vincenzo lozzo
Sent: Monday, July 2, 2018 8:04 AM
To: jeevacation@gmail.com
Subject: Ledger wallet warning
Attachments: image1jpeg; Untitled attachment 00284.txt
In case you hold any coins in it, please don't spread this as they h=ven't released any of the information yet.
As for what is worth, the other wallets seem just as bad
--------------
Links:
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02501...
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02507...
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA008603...
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02505...
Lol at the thought of Steve Bannon speaking at DEFCON (last link).
2018? Irrelevant
Or at any rate, Ledger did have some vulnerabilities slightly before that month (and probably after) but it doesn't seem like an especially noteworthy connection.
> For people who own Bitcoin at this point one of the only thing kinda sensible to do is to use multisig schemes, like 2-of-2 or 3-of-3 multisig, where your split the secret over two or three different hardware wallet brands
What about ignoring proprietary hardware wallets, and implement your 'wallet' as a small, bare-bones, self installed debian system with enough empty disk space to be a full node, that stores the data on a dm-crypt volume? Buy the hardware in cash from a random used computer store. No it won't be as convenient and portable. But if you trust standards-based crypto, you can implement your own ssh tunnel or whatever to it from your other client devices. This also lets you take 1:1 disk clone images of the dm-crypt volume and safely back it up to remote locations at any time you want.
what kind of hardware would you buy to have a reasonable chance at being usable in 15 or 20 years?
Why would it need to remain one item of hardware? It could even be a KVM VM that you set up to be 'portable' between different hardware platforms. A bitcoin wallet and full node in a Linux environment is just files on a filesystem, you can move it between systems as you upgrade. Take backups however you want to. Or make your own cold storage copy of it, etc.
If you really don't want to trust digitally generated seed phrases or digital wallets in general, and that seems reasonable to me, just roll some dice or flip coins.
Its slow, but it will never have been tampered with and can't be digitally cracked if you have multiple physical copies of the resulting seed.
> No matter whether you like or hate or don't care about cryptocurrencies, this is incredible stuff...
> Now basically: every single attack that's been described as "theoretical" or "far-fetched" or "only existing in the mind of a paranoid person" did actually happen.
Huh? Nothing here is theoretical or far-fetched. Hardware attacks of this sort have been documented for decades and basically part-and-parcel for most intelligence agencies, from the US govt installing backdoors in Cisco hardware to the exploding pagers for Hamas. This is not even the first hardware wallet attack documented on the internet (although it might be the largest-scale one).
It's just that hardware attacks are complicated, expensive, and risky, so they're usually done in a targeted manner. The only news here is that the crypto community painted a gigantic target on their backs by inventing a currency that can be taken from them with zero recourse, broadcasting it to the world that they own a lot of it, and then buying cheap hardware from overseas retailers to "protect" their assets. So all of sudden, it was profitable and relatively low-risk to cast a wider net.
It's fascinating in the sense that we're discovering from first principles why the financial system works the way it does. The damage caused by cryptocurrencies has been really pretty staggering, for little real benefit.
It is far-fetched because it is an attack by thieves on consumers, not a state intelligence agency and intelligence targets. It's far-fetched for me to fly an B-2 bomber, but it's been commonplace for US government for decades.
Thieves and intelligence agencies can be one and the same, see North Korea... Crypto is especially useful for heavily sanctioned countries.
Agree on your comments about amateur hour.
I've worked in payment terminal hardware security and this is not surprising to me at all.
This attack on the Ledger wallets would definitely rate as amateur in terms of sophistication in that world.
I don't own any crypto, but if I did, I'd probably choose to use a multisig setup with 2+ signers, including at least one (regularly pentested) software wallet.
It depends what you do with your coins. Hardware wallets are meant to be used for people that frequently trade and need to sign transactions.
I always thought it is stupid to HODL using a hardware wallet. For HODLing, just get a random computer (no mailorder) and run debian13 with electrum (it is in the official repo, not an external package hence protected by standard debian safeties). Once you generated you keys, back them up and either wipe the machine, or at least airgap it.
Extra bonus: Raspberry pi 5 runs debian 13 out of the box.
> We're talking here about a tiny eSIM implant and a little CPU doing OCR on the fonts appearing on the hardware wallet's screen to read the secrets during set up. So the secure element ain't tampered with.
Nit: did it actually do OCR? Given the implant was embedded in a specific known device that probably used specifically known fonts, you'd think they could just do a lookup a character's block of pixels to read the screen.
This also speaks to Bitcoin's design weakness in the form of the distributed, authority-less blockchain: there is no authority that can undo or correct illegally made transactions. I know that this is used as a selling point for crypto coins, but I would argue that it is the central enabler behind these conplex technical attacks because it shifts the economy far into the attacker's favor.
> there is no authority that can undo or correct illegally made transactions
That is the only way to ensure no "authority" can undo or correct legally made transactions.
Perhaps it is possible that VisaNet is priced more fairly than it would seem at first glance?
I don't have to think about any of this stuff when I am using the payment terminal at Kroger. We have well engineered systems that eliminate the need for being constantly on edge about every monetary transaction. I can lose my entire actual wallet and experience ~zero financial impact, even if a malicious party obtains it.
Because card readers brick themselves if opened or tampered with. If Ledger designed their hardware the same, this attack would not be possible.
So we are going with an additional layer of complexity?
What happens if my wallet bricks itself due to some misconfiguration or environmental transient? I don't have to keep multiple redundant copies of my payment cards around just in case my physical wallet self destructs.
Here I am using an iPhone app like I have been for a decade, feeling safer than ever. I'm really glad I didn't jump on the hardware wallet trend.
It always depends how much money you got in the wallet. People in the crypto space go super paranoid, 2-of-3 signing schemes with top-notch security, hardware legers, metal-plated keys that are burried in the woods etc, and in the end they hold less than 1000$ in the wallet... All safety measures should be chosen relative to the amount you are actually securing.
How about a bank vault? 500 year old tech that is still safe.
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Even iPhone apps:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x46gnh/a_fake_cry...
That app did not have nearly the effort put in, compared to the subject of this article.
That poster didn’t even prove the fake wallet app stole his bitcoin (in the sense required in a court of law). Presumably it wasn’t worth the effort because their money was gone and not coming back, but still.
Not sure if your comment invalidates the context: your iPhone app (or hardware or iOS, etc) could have a bug that was not discovered yet. It's all about attack vectors, and opponent motivation and resources.
Can't believe people who went to the trouble of figuring out a hardware wallet are getting robbed just as badly as my naïve ass, who just held all my crypto at FTX
As I understand, they recovered quite a lot in the FTX bankruptcy. The guy running it now ( John J. Ray III ) is a bankruptcy legend. What was your recovery rate(%)?
And at least you know who stole from you (SBF)
I bought some bitcoin in 2017. Im using electrum, I'm terrified I'm going to get hacked. To the point where I don't even have electrum installed anywhere. I was thinking paper wallets are probably my best bet. I'm not sure what to do. And right now I don't have enough time to seriously investigate my options.
> You're not anywhere near paranoid enough
I refuse to touch anything crypto with a ten-foot pole. I don't know if that makes me "paranoid", but it is certainly very easy. Just stay away from the thing doing drug markets, scams and rugpulls every month.
The US dollar would like a word
Fair. I didn't include the word primarily in my sentence. Please assume it is included now.
Got worried there for a second about the mokka pot I got through Amazon instead of Bialetti.
Lots of security relies on potential attackers being lazy and relatively 'sane'.
There are lots of security measures you can bypass if you pretend to be crazy within given bounds or simply stop acting sane.
Apparently the world learned nothing from Israel's Pager Attack.
Post it note in a drawer somewhere baby
> or "only existing in the mind of a paranoid person" did actually happen.
This reminds me of the 2020 case where a union organizer thought there was a spy camera inside a utility pole outside his house. It was in a conspiracy subreddit, so it seemed like the deranged ramblings of a ravingly-paranoid stranger. But they found the addresses of the IP cams and had plenty of evidence to corroborate it.
Now, Flock cameras are just normal.
I think the 2020s will be defined by this trend. "Things which only existed in the minds of a paranoid person" becoming normal parts of daily life.
Most large cities in the world have had thousands of public CCTV cameras for decades. Traffic enforcement cameras have been super normal for even longer.
I am not talking about those. These cameras were targeted and pointing directly into peoples windows, set up by the local police department, under the guise of being electric utility boxes.
Here are two sources on the matter:
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy_commons/comments/gin79z/...
https://www.fox13memphis.com/news/activists-find-camera-insi...
In August 2020, this was unbelievable, and it would have been considered reasonable (if wrong) to dismiss OP as paranoid, especially for the subreddit they posted in.
Bitcoin rich people generally did nothing legitimate to earn their wealth and are often straight up devious criminals, so hearing this story about them being robbed is just a rare instance of karmic justice, IMO.
This is the argument that scammers and ransomware gangs use: we (the criminals) live in a poor country, and you, the rich white people, enjoy all the benefits. Nothing happens if you lose some of your savings, especially if it's a business and not some granny.
Sure, but I don't rob anyone at all, regardless of how awful they are, and I have definitely been the victim of grift, because I pay taxes in the US.
Multiple crypto-experts said that the safest crypto wallet is a recent iPhone in airplane mode which is only used for this purpose. Because it's much harder to implant that your average hardware crypto wallet.
On the other hand, the attack surface of an iPhone is huge compared to a dedicated hardware wallet, and it's hard to keep it in airplane mode and actually transact your coins.
You can use QR codes or USB sticks to sign offline transactions, same as with a hardware wallet.
How about if you build your own airgapped hw wallet? There should be plenty folks here who would be capable of doing so. (Doesn't even have to be the most hardened and audited implementation ever since you won't release this to anybody.) This makes you vulnerable to purely very targetted attacks.
As long as the cost of sucha single-target attack isn't substantially below its potential upside, you should be safe.
Otoh, it's only meaningful if you have more than just toy assets in there.
There should be a range between those two though that would contain lots of folks comfortably.
> How about if you build your own airgapped hw wallet?
Also known as buying a laptop, removing the WiFi card, and putting stock Ubuntu on it.
Yeah, the problem with "crypto hardware wallets" is the same as the problem with "secure phones for drug dealers" - they are an extremely juicy targets, you KNOW that any user of them is your target.
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How about a recent Pixel with GrapheneOS, again kept in airplane mode and only used for this purpose? Using QR codes for transaction signing.
Why is it harder to implant?
The hardware is much more sophisticated, miniaturized, and high-speed, and the supply chain is much more generic; a Ledger is a really primitive piece of hardware with a simple display interface and a ton of empty space inside it. An iPhone has no wasted space and extremely high-speed onboard buses that would be hard to sniff. Additionally, with Ledger, you know that every customer is going to be using the device to access crypto, so it's an easy target nearer the head of the supply chain. With an iPhone, you have no idea what end-user to target the implant against.
You can walk in to an official Apple store and buy an iphone direct almost anywhere in the world. Crypto thieves would have to have compromised the entirety of Apple's supply chain and found space inside the iphone to fit a whole spy chip (of which there is basically none).
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I'm going to guess it's a number's game, you might be able to do it with an iPhone but it's not guaranteed to go to a crypto user, whereas the other one is a bespoke system for the purpose.
I presume because iPhones have a secure TPM and nobody is targeting them for crypto supply chain attacks.
"crypto-experts"
Exactly, inspiration.
after you entered your seed into the device.
ewww
> this is incredible stuff...
Is it? The theory and even the implementation is literally a gas station credit card skimmer for crypto. I do agree that anyone dismissing attacks on Ledger was foolish, but mostly because Ledger is an obviously low-quality product on even a cursory inspection, not because we need to become even more paranoid conspiracy theorists.
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This is why I sold my bitcoin early - all those years of reading Phrack. Sure, it was $300 at the time and I could have made more, but I had no idea how to securely _store_ it. Still don't.
You are king sensible. Well done. Just $90,000 per BTC worse off ha ha.
I had 3 whole bitcoin. Lol.
I remember chatting with about AI a few months ago about the issue of foreign RAM sticks being able to cooperate with websites to serve different files/instructions, undetectably. Scary stuff.
Are you sure whatever the LLM said was actually credible though?
Why would I assume it would be credible? Instead, I simply proposed some designs and had it find out if such hardware existed / was feasible.
Absolutely not… but maybe the LLM was trying to tell them it’s a crazy idea and they are only reporting that a conversation occurred.