It only took FBI 2 days to crack the phone of Trump shooter! Are cryptocurrency cold wallets and hot wallets safe?

This site (120bTC.coM): Former US President Trump suffered an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last Sunday. Two days after the incident, the FBI announced that it had been successful. Although the FBI did not disclose its cracking method to crack the gunman's mobile phone, the speed of cracking it shows that the technology of cracking mobile phones has improved significantly.

Mobile phone cracking technology has improved significantly

The Verge reported that when mass shootings or domestic terrorism cases occurred in the past, the FBI would take weeks or even months to crack the suspect’s phone. The FBI had started a lawsuit with Apple at the end of 2015. The dispute stemmed from Apple's refusal to help law enforcement break the encryption on a California shooter's iPhone.

In early 2016, Apple refused a federal court order requiring Apple to assist the FBI in accessing the shooter’s phone because it would have required Apple to create a backdoor to crack the iPhone’s encryption software, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an open letter that year. , the FBI asked Apple to modify iOS to allow electronic password entry for brute force attacks: It is wrong for the government to force us to build backdoors into our products, and ultimately, we worry that this request will undermine the freedoms and rights the government is supposed to protect.

However, it is amazing how quickly the FBI cracked the phone of the gunman who assassinated Trump. Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior technical expert at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that law enforcement agencies have a variety of tools to extract cell phone data. , almost all police stations in the United States have Cellebrite devices, which can extract mobile phone data and have certain capabilities to unlock mobile phones.

Cellebrite is an Israeli company and one of several companies that provide mobile device extraction tools (MDTFs) to law enforcement agencies. The performance and price of third-party MDTFs vary. The FBI may also have its own in-house tools that are useful to law enforcement agencies. said third-party MDTF is an effective way to bypass tech companies' reluctance to help hack customers' phones.

A 2020 investigation by Upturn, a Washington-based non-profit organization, found that more than 2,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States can use MDTFs. The most advanced tool is GrayKey, which sells for between 15,000 and 30,000 US dollars. GrayKey developer Grayshift is It was announced in March this year that its Magnet Gray Key device has supported cracking the latest Apple iOS17, Samsung Galaxy S24 and Pixel 6 and 7 devices.

Are cryptocurrency wallets still safe?

After this incident, whether cryptocurrency wallets can safely avoid the threat of cracking tools has also become the focus of the community. The advantage of hot wallets connected to the Internet is convenience. Users can quickly conduct transactions, but The security of the hot wallet also relies on the protection capabilities of the device itself. Once the phone is cracked, the private key in the hot wallet may also be exposed, resulting in the theft of cryptocurrency.

This incident of the FBI quickly cracking a mobile phone shows that even the most advanced mobile phone security system may be vulnerable to powerful cracking tools. Therefore, the security of hot wallets is seriously challenged in this case.

In contrast, cold wallets are relatively secure because they are not directly connected to the Internet. As a hardware device for offline storage of cryptocurrency, cold wallets are designed to avoid the risk of cyber attacks, but the security of cold wallets is not Foolproof, the security of a cold wallet can also be compromised if there are loopholes in its design or if the manufacturer has left a backdoor.

In 2023, the network security company Unciphered claimed to have successfully cracked Trezor’s cold wallet.

Therefore, in the current technical environment, offline paper wallet may be the safest choice. Paper wallet is a storage method that prints public and private keys on paper. It is usually printed using a paper wallet generator. , and completely offline, avoiding any potential vulnerabilities of digital devices. However, although paper wallets provide the highest degree of security, users still need to pay attention to keeping them properly to prevent loss or damage.

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