Digital security has been a concern ever since the first consumer PS’s connected to the internet. Today billions of dollars are spent each year on anti-virus and security suites to protect our data from intruders who use things like Trojans, key loggers and root kits to compromise us or just a simple virus to give us endless headaches. We are rapidly discovering that as the world turns to a digital economy that our security must be extended and currently this means the most secure Bitcoin wallet available.
PRISMcide
Not only do we have to worry hackers ranging from pranking teenagers to criminal cartels but we have to worry about governments as well. The release of information by Edward Snowden last year shook most of the world’s citizens. Snowden said that a US government program named PRISM allowed the National Security Agency to access every piece of information on your computer without a warrant or even notice, archiving it for later use. PRISMcide is an open source answer to at least some of these problems.
The foundation of PRISMcide is their Bitcoin wallet and extends out to portable players and smart cards that allow you to isolate your wallet from any potential threat. The wallet is embedded into a portable player which is used to read the smart card using a Hierarchical Deterministic Wallet (BIP0032) solution during card initialization. This way each user is able to back up the card initial seed to regenerate the private keys on a new card if the original card is lost, stolen or damaged. The introduction video offered by PRISMcide is very well made and informative about not only why the product was developed but also how it works to protect your resources.
The smart cards and matching hardware are both open source that can be used with both Android and iOS smartphones and tablets via Bluetooth or more directly with Windows, Mac and Linux through USB connection. Since the private key is secured inside the smartcard it is impossible to hack unless the card is actually in contact with a device and then the device has to already be compromised to allow access to the card. The player adds yet another layer of protection by printing the transaction on its screen before validation so that you see the actual transaction. Basically users have a personal terminal to conduct business through and even if the user loses their card if they have the seed (where private keys are generated from) backed up a new card can be encoded with the information and new keys can be generated.
PRISMcide has already contacted several of the prime wallet providers such as Dark Wallet, KryptoKit, Electrum and Multibit to ensure capability and they are actively looking for funding to complete the project. They have both an indiegogo campaign and a crowdsourcing campaign in full swing.