According to CNBC, around $1.1B of cryptocurrency was stolen in just the first half of 2018. Cybercriminals try to exploit the weakest points in the crypto ecosystem and often find those points in cryptocurrency wallets.
A cryptocurrency wallet is typically a file that contains a user’s keys, including a private key - a piece of information that is needed to spend the user’s money. The wallets are password protected and naturally secure by themselves, but, via human error, are often rendered vulnerable: users make weak passwords, store them adjacent to their wallet files, or fail to use antivirus software. All these mistakes open the door for hackers to obtain wallet files with their corresponding passwords.
However, there is a solution that eliminates these threats altogether - hardware wallets. Hardware wallets have gained noticeable popularity in the last few years - they are used by consumers and businesses, including exchanges, to safely store cryptographical credential data outside of their computers. They are often used to facilitate cold storage - a means of storage that is not connected to the outside world to eliminate any risk of credential theft, Hardware wallets are generally small devices that look like thumb drives or smartphones. Among the most popular are those produced by Ledger, Trezor, and KeepKey. The key principle of operation is that hardware wallets allow consumers to digitally sign a transaction without disclosing the private key to the computer from which a transaction is being sent.
In order to make that happen, the cryptographic keys are first loaded onto the hardware wallet. Then, whenever a transaction needs to be sent, it is first given to the hardware wallet, connected to a computer via cable or wireless connection. The hardware wallet uses the private key of the user to digitally sign a transaction and sends it back to the computer to be submitted to the blockchain. That way users are able to use their credentials without transferring them onto the computer, from which their transaction is being sent from.
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