Show HN: The SC4-HSM, a fully open USB hardware secure module

Re:Show HN: The SC4-HSM, a fully open USB hardware secure mo... by technion on Friday July 08, 2016 @08:23AM (#12054951)

I see this as a lot like the "GPG is very secure but no one uses it" scenario. People who have certain needs can open up their wallets for certain products.

The adversary for the vast majority of practical scenarios is some remote attacker exploiting some unpatched vulnerability.

How much less of an issue would all the recent password dumps be if the hash algorithm was a simple HMAC on a device like this?

And surely a bitcoin wallet has a better chance on this device, than sitting in a file on my desktop just hoping the password never gets key logged.

And, moreso than any other point, at the current price point, this device is actually plausible to experiment with.

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Re:Show HN: The SC4-HSM, a fully open USB hardware secure mo... by lisper on Friday July 08, 2016 @01:24PM (#12057163)

> at the current price point, this device is actually plausible to experiment with

Yes, that's really the idea at this point. Neither the hardware nor the firmware have been audited, so it would be unwise to use it to protect anything mission-critical at the moment (which is why there's a big disclaimer to that effect on the order page). On the other hand, the approach does seem to be holding up well to initial scrutiny.

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