Re:‘I forgot my PIN’: An epic tale of losing $30,000 in bitcoin
by zwily on Monday October 30, 2017 @11:03PM
(#15590834)
That's how they work - the PIN decrypts the encrypted seed key. However, after decryption, the seed key ("recovery key") is kept around in memory in order to actually be able to sign transactions/etc.
Re:‘I forgot my PIN’: An epic tale of losing $30,000 in bitcoin
by Scoundreller on Monday October 30, 2017 @11:15PM
(#15590866)
There are a few methods in which they could avoid keeping direct plaintext entries in memory that are difficult to extract without knowing the ROM code.
How so? You can use pins for encryption, I believe that's what tptacek was referring to.
If you use a strong key derivation function with an efficient hardware (i.e. within a few orders of efficiency limits of current generation), while using maybe 10J of energy, will economically protect at least about $1000, or $16000 with an 8 character pin. In practice significantly more because of hardware costs for a parallel attack, and the casual cracker wouldn't be willing to spend that much on a totally uncertain reward. At moderate hardware costs it could take years to crack.