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Hardware wallet question

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castorfromtheva

Just use a stateless device like Seedsigner or Blockstream’s Jade (in qr-only mode) and your keys will not even be stored on the device.

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po00on

It depends on the hardware wallet. Some of them will withstand brute force attempts, where as others, like the Trezor, seem reasonably easy to exploit.

[https://blog.kraken.com/product/security/kraken-identifies-critical-flaw-in-trezor-hardware-wallets](https://blog.kraken.com/product/security/kraken-identifies-critical-flaw-in-trezor-hardware-wallets)

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phileo

If you notice your wallet is gone or moved to a different place or sign it’s been tampered with, it’s probably best to move your coins to a new wallet. Just to be safe. It’s pretty hard to access your coins from the stolen wallet, though. They must have a good amount of tech. skills and resources.

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physicsbuddha

use a passphrase

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Inevitable-Driver-53

It does not matter if you lose your wallet. You just don’t want to lose your keys. As soon as you realize your wallet was stolen, immediately transfer your coins using your passkeys to another device. That’s it.

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Drokzxdddd

better to keep wallet safe and sound

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JeffWest01

You can always wipe your device if you are not using it. Then, if someone steals it, it is no use to them. When you want to move coins reenter your seed words (and passphrase).

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Alone-Hospital-6028

It really doesn’t matter, if they do not know the pin to your hardware, they can’t access your crypto… but they can fuck around with the guts and go that route. Once someone gains access to your cold wallet, it is considered compromised and you should get yourself a new one and establish a new wallet.

or if they gained access to your seed phrase, they have full access to your crypto, unless you have established a passphrase and exclusively use the passphrase wallet.

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Dettol-tasting-menu

If someone has tempered with your HWW the good ones (like Coldcard) would alert you by showing you a different temper proof word combo when you enter the PIN. Also the clear casing would let you see more easily if something weird has been added to your coldcard. That’s why it’s such a good HWW. Even though for me personally the probability of someone get hold of my CC, modify it, and put it back to where I keep it, is so low it’s not a real risk to me, I still appreciate the fact that it’s been thought about and checks are implemented.

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Peach-555

Depends on the wallet but there are examples of Trezor wallets specifically having their pins or seed restored from the hardware by the owners by hacking it. Don’t think it’s possible to restore a passphrase if it’s not stored on the hardware wallet, which it’s often not. There is a 0.1% to 0.00001% chance the pin will be guessed at the first try even if it’s 100% random.

There is probably no hardware wallet that’s 100% safe against hacking in case someone actually physically finds it, but there is a high likelihood of destroying the hardware wallet beyond repair if something goes wrong and it potentially takes a long time, equipment, skill and effort to actually pull it off. The cost and time to hacking a hardware wallet, even when there are known methods, is so high nobody bothers unless they know a specific hardware wallet has a lot of Bitcoin in it.

If someone steals your bitcoin wallet, no matter which model it is, you will be able to move the BTC to a new seed before they are able to break into it. Hardware wallets primary use is allowing users to send transactions without having to setup a dedicated always-offline machine to generate the transaction data.

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