What's Next for Bitcoin Wallet Security?
Times have been busy in the bitcoin wallet world lately. Two hardware wallets - Trezor and BTChip - have finally shipped, and wallet security continues to mature. In spite of all this, though, people who should know better are still being robbed because they fail to add more protection to their bitcoin holdings. To tackle the issue of bitcoin wallet vulnerabilities, it's important to look at the security protections that are currently available for wallets, and to explore what work still needs to be done in the future. Multisig. 2014 was to be the year of multiple signatures (multisig),....
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Bojan Simic, the founder of theBitcoin Security Project, has released a new, free, and open source bitcoin wallet for Android called Aegis Wallet. The wallet supports multiple currencies and provides the user with the ability to view their transactions and addresses on the bitcoin blockchain. Aegis Wallet allows you to encrypt your wallet. If someone were to get a hold of your Android phone it will be impossible for them to take your bitcoins. All you would have to do is get another phone, import a backup from your email, and go on about your sweet life. "We have Designed Aegis for....
Today, 13% of Bitcoin is protected by multisig technology. A growing minority of Bitcoin users employ a multi-signature wallet, which uses more than one private key to access the wallet. By using this approach, wallets are much less vulnerable to security breaches, as no single party possesses all the information necessary to decrypt the wallet. Princeton professor Arvind Narayanan tweeted about the significance of the multisig uptick: More cryptocurrency wallets offering multisig support. More Bitcoin wallet providers have recently enabled multisig functionality, as it seems to be headed....
Gem partners with Thales e-Security. Bitcoin startup Gem, that provides a scalable API for bitcoin developers, has revealed to CCN a security enhancement that may be significant for the future of Bitcoin security. The company announced the inclusion of Custom Hardware Security Modules produced by Thales e-Security, as part of their standard multi-sig bitcoin wallet. Multi-sig wallets have become the standard for Bitcoin wallet security. A multi-sig wallet is associated with several private keys, making it more secure. Gem's inclusion of the Hardware Security Modules or HSMs, is bound to....
Name: Ledger Wallet Nano. What it is: A USB bitcoin wallet with smartcard security in a very compact package. Who's behind it: Three French startups: BTChip, Chronocoin and La Maison du Bitcoin. Cost: €29.90. Date launched: December 2014. Summary: The Ledger Wallet Nano is a relatively affordable bitcoin hardware wallet with a few clever tricks up its sleeve. It also looks good and the company promises to make it even better with a companion mobile app set to launch in 2015. CoinDesk rating: 4/5. Where to buy: Direct from Ledger or Overstock.com. The basics. Security. Using the device.....
One of the challenges of storing bitcoin securely is finding the appropriate tradeoff between security and convenience. On one end of the spectrum, hosted online wallets make it super simple to store your bitcoin online and access them from any computer by logging in with a username and password. However, this means that your account can be compromised easily by an attacker who learns your email and password. This also means that you must trust your hosted wallet provider to offer appropriate security measures. On the high-security end of the spectrum, paper wallets allow you to store....