[Bitcoin-development] Update on mobile 2-factor wallets

[Mike Hearn]

Yes. I think one of the next things we need is a library that produces nice
and attractive PDFs of "wallet certificates" so it's easy to print out a
paper backup.

But the whole field of secure key escrow needs more research. Banking gives
people the very nice property that you can lose literally everything except
your face and still retain access to your money, so people feel very safe
with that. Matching that experience doesn't seem possible at the moment, so
being your own bank will continue to seem much riskier than just using a
real one.
On 8 Nov 2014 17:21, "Jeff Garzik" <jgarzik at bitpay.com> wrote:

> Overall, super duper awesome.  :)  Tweeted this post.
>
> I do have a concern about 2-of-2 arrangements.  To me, this screams
> "twice as fragile" if not done properly; and I've seen a few naive
> implementations in the field that seemed quite fragile.
>
> 2FA/2-of-2 does solve the common problem of single device compromise.
> It also makes funds unspendable if -either- device's keys become lost.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 8, 2014 at 5:04 PM, Mike Hearn <mike at plan99.net> wrote:
> > Here is a summary of current developments in the space of decentralised
> > 2-factor Bitcoin wallets. I figured some people here might find it
> > interesting.
> >
> > There has been very nice progress in the last month or two. Decentralised
> > 2FA wallets run on a desktop/laptop and have a (currently always Android)
> > smartphone app to go with them. Compromise of the wallet requires
> compromise
> > of both devices.
> >
> > Alon Muroch and Chris Pacia have made huge progress on "Bitcoin
> > Authenticator", their (HD) wallet app. The desktop side runs on
> > Win/Mac/Linux and the mobile side runs on Android. Sending money from the
> > desktop triggers a push notification to the mobile side, which presents
> the
> > transaction for confirmation. Additionally the desktop wallet has a
> variety
> > of other features like OneName integration. It's currently in alpha, but
> I
> > suspect it will be quite popular once released due to its focus on UI and
> > the simple mobile security model. I've tried it out and it worked fine.
> >
> > https://www.bitcoinauthenticator.org/
> > https://github.com/cpacia/BitcoinAuthenticator/commits/master
> (mobile)
> > https://github.com/negedzuregal/BitcoinAuthWallet   (desktop)
> >
> > Bitcoin Authenticator uses P2SH/CHECKMULTISIG to provide the 2-factor
> > functionality. However, this has various downsides that are well known:
> > less support for the address type and larger transactions that waste
> block
> > chain space + result in higher fees.
> >
> > To solve this problem Christopher Mann and Daniel Loebenberger from Uni
> Bonn
> > have ported the efficient DSA 2-of-2 signing protocol by MacKenzie and
> > Reiter to ECDSA, and implemented their own desktop/Android wallet app
> pair
> > showing that it works and has good enough performance. This means that
> P2SH
> > / CHECKMULTISIG is no longer required for the two factor auth case, and
> thus
> > it's as cheap as using regular addresses.
> >
> > https://github.com/ChristopherMann/2FactorWallet
> > https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/629.pdf
> >
> > Their protocol uses an interesting combination of ECDSA, Paillier
> > homomorphic encryption and some zero knowledge proofs to build a working
> > solution for the 2-of-2 case only. Their app bootstraps from a QR code
> that
> > includes a TLS public key and IP address of the desktop: the mobile app
> then
> > connects to it directly, renders the transaction and performs the
> protocol
> > when the user confirms. The protocol is online, so both devices must be
> > physically present.
> >
> > Their code is liberally licensed and looks easy to integrate with Alon
> and
> > Chris' more user focused work, as both projects are built with Android
> and
> > the latest bitcoinj. If someone is interested, merging
> Christopher/Daniel's
> > code into the bitcoinj multisig framework would be a useful project, and
> > would make it easier for wallet devs to benefit from this work. I can
> write
> > a design doc to follow if needed.
> >
> > Currently, neither of these projects implement support for BIP70, so the
> > screen you see when signing the transaction is hardly user friendly or
> > secure: you just have to trust that the destination address you're
> paying to
> > isn't tampered with. Support for sending a full payment request between
> > devices is the clear next step once these wallets have obtained a
> reasonable
> > user base and are stable.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bitcoin-development mailing list
> > Bitcoin-development at lists.sourceforge.net
> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Jeff Garzik
> Bitcoin core developer and open source evangelist
> BitPay, Inc.      https://bitpay.com/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20141108/c0117d8f/attachment.html>