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Isolated, Air-Gapped Cypto-Wallets Hacked

He who holds the private keys owns all of the bitcoins. For those who manage their cryptocurrency in offline, or "cold," wallets under the premise that they cannot be compromised, recent news from researcher Dr. Mordechai Guri from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, raises some alarms. Guri demonstrated that cold wallets can be infected with malicious code, allowing an attacker to access the wallet’s private keys.

Because cold wallets are presumably safer than storing their keys in "hot," or online, wallets, many cryptocurreny owners keep their bitcoin wallets isolated in air-gapped PCs so that they are away from the internet and not connected to any network, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

In addition to publishing a white paper, Guri also demonstrated the attack method’s effectiveness using malware called bridgeware, which successfully leaks the bitcoin private key over air gap via ultrasonic signals in only 3 seconds.





"I think that the interesting issue is that the airgap attacks that were thought to be exotic issues for high-end attacks may become more widespread," Guri wrote in an email to Ars Technica. "While airgap covert channels might be considered somewhat slow for other types of information, they are very relevant for such brief amounts of information. I want to show the security of 'cold wallet' is not hermetic given the existing air-gap covert channels."

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