The developers of the Trezor wallet have recalled its advantages against hacking attempts planned by the US authorities, as IRS want 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) has placed a tender to create a universal solution for hacking hardware wallets that they want to investigate.
1/8 Efforts to oppress citizens and erode individuals' rights to privacy, as we see here, are a great validator of Trezor's open-source philosophy. Since the beginning, we have designed Trezor (both in hardware and software) to be as open as possible. https://t.co/Ith6lAbMIY
— Trezor (@Trezor) April 29, 2021
Currently, experts are not able to effectively “investigate the movement of currencies”, as well as “confiscate millions and billions of dollars, ” IRS reports in the document.
Security expert Andrew Tierney, in a comment to the publication, questioned the possibility of implementing of 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 owner can move the coins if he finds out that access to the wallet could be compromised, ” he explained.
Nicholas Weaver, a senior fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, called the initiative “an overreach.” According to him, it is enough to put the owner of the wallet in a prison than to hack funds.
The creator of hardware wallets Trezor said that it follows the philosophy of open source software development. According to Trezor, this excludes the possibility of cooperation with the authorities to add a secret hardware or software backdoor.
“Thousands of experts monitor 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.
3/8There are thousands of security experts watching our every move, auditing every change in the code. This acts as a perfect failsafe mechanism and no one would use the compromised version.
— Trezor (@Trezor) April 29, 2021
Trezor stated that there are no 100% guarantees against hacking. They provided the BIP39 standard, with which the user can restore the wallet.
5/8 That's why we came up with the so-called BIP39 passphrase, which is a final layer of encryption that is not stored on the device at all. Only a user with a device and knowledge of the right passphrase can access the funds.
— Trezor (@Trezor) April 29, 2021
Experts stressed that there can be many mnemonic phrases that prevent access to coins. Trezor signed the “canary’s certificate”. In it, they reported that they did not cooperate with anyone regarding the software and did not implement backdoors.
7/8 BIP39 passphrases also grant plausible deniability: there is no such thing as an incorrect passphrase, and each passphrase will lead to a different, valid wallet. With that in mind, you can create an infinite number of decoy wallets by providing different passphrases.
— Trezor (@Trezor) April 29, 2021
Earlier, the IRS sent out letters to cryptocurrency holders demanding to pay large debts to the state.
Recall that in March 2021, the IRS launched operation “Hidden Treasure” to search for residents who hide their income earned from crypto.
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