The developers of the Trezor hardware wallet recalled its advantages against hacking attempts against the background of plans by the US authorities to create a tool to bypass protection and gain access to crypto assets.
On April 29, Vice announced that the digital forensics division of the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had placed a tender to create a universal solution for hacking hardware wallets that may be of interest to investigations.
Currently, experts are not able to effectively “investigate the movement of currencies,” as well as “confiscate millions and billions of dollars,” the agency reports in the document.
Security expert Andrew Tierney, in a comment to the publication, questioned the possibility of implementing the IRS plans.
“Hardware wallets are now becoming quite secure. It may be possible to find vulnerabilities in some of them, but it will be very difficult to find ready-made exploits. Another problem is the lack of funds in the wallet as such. It’s just the keys. The owner can move the coins if he finds out that access to the wallet could have been compromised,” he explained.
Nicholas Weaver, a senior researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, called the initiative “an inflection.” According to him, it is enough to put the owner of the wallet before a choice: either a password or a prison sentence.
The creator of Trezor hardware wallets stated that he follows the philosophy of open source software development. According to the developers, this excludes the possibility of cooperation with the authorities to add a secret hardware or software backdoor.
“Thousands of experts are following our every move, checking every change in the code. This acts as a perfect fail-safe mechanism. No one will use the compromised version,” he explained.
Trezor stated that there are no 100% guarantees against hacking. They have provided the BIP39 standard, with which the user can restore the wallet.
Experts stressed that there can be many mnemonic phrases that prevent access to coins. Trezor signed the so-called “canary certificate”. In it, they reported that they did not cooperate with anyone regarding the software and did not implement backdoors.
Earlier, the IRS sent letters to holders of cryptocurrencies demanding to repay large debts to the state.
Recall that in March 2021, the service launched the operation “Hidden Treasure” to search for residents hiding their income from operations with cryptocurrencies.
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