BC VAULT – the new generation of Crypto Hardware Wallets promises ease of use and more functionalities and security features
Maribor, Slovenia, October 8, 2018. BC Vault is a brand-new Crypto Hardware Wallet from REAL security Inc., an information security distribution and engineering company headquartered in Maribor-Slovenia, which aims to disrupt the market with better user experience when handling the device and application, higher level of security with per-wallet encryption, better backup options with encrypted SD card exports, support for over 2000 simultaneous wallets and much more.
The idea behind this new stronger hardware crypto wallet was from the very start to give the user a reliable, fully functional and independent device which doesn’t resemble a cheap USB stick with only basic functionality and with unreliable and difficult user operation.
“When we analyzed the market and tested existing products, we found that the current products on the market are difficult to use and clunky, don’t offer some critical features, they rely on specific browsers to function, use an extremely limited number of deterministic wallets. Some of them even don’t have a display and if they do have it, they use small impractical, hard to read displays (and are expensive!). The current products have desktop software that’s very inconvenient for normal use and many of them use an old way of backing up the data. As a company working for more than 20 years in the IT security industry, we’ve successfully managed the most critical projects for the financial sector, telco environment and government infrastructure. We understand and know how to handle the most demanding projects for protecting and securing precious data. We used all of this experience and knowledge to design and produce BC VAULT, a product or better to say a complete solution for the blockchain industry and regular users alike. To prove our confidence, we preloaded every device with 1.0 BTC. Each and every BC Vault ship pre-loaded with a private key, encrypted the exact same way as every other user private key on the device. This private key corresponds to a public address/wallet that owns 1.0 BTC. If you break the encryption on it, it’s yours to take! “explains Renato Uhl, CEO and co-owner of REAL security inc..
The idea of bringing a new solution to the market started one year ago where we, because of lack of functionalities and operating problems by using solutions that were on the market at that time, decided to develop our own solution. By analyzing the current technologies and solutions we found out that we could produce a much more convenient product and a much more user-friendly experience. We divided the users into two types: knowledgeable users and novices. Our goal from then on was to make a product that both types of users would know how to use. We made it as easy as possible for novices, but we kept in the advanced features that we know users more familiar with crypto look for. Everything had to be intuitive and behave as an average user expects. We worked with experienced designers to create a beautiful GUI that is also incredibly functional and practical.
“BC Vault is the first commercially available multi-crypto wallet offering SECURE BACKUPS”
Support for different browsers
BC VAULT does not require a browser to function like some other solutions. We know that some users are wary of the security implications of their main crypto interface being browser based, therefore we went for a native approach. We support unified API for all platforms (such as exchanges, payment processors) which will make it easier than ever to integrate secure payment processing and fraud prevention into your service. Supported browsers for external services: Firefox 52+, Chrome 50+, Opera 51+, Safari 11+ and IE 11+ (all new versions).
BC VAULT gives you the possibility to store more than 2000 unique wallets, each encrypted with different passcode.
Early in development we considered using deterministic wallets, but the idea was discarded for a multitude of reasons. We chose not to use deterministic wallets us for example Ledger and TREZOR do, because public keys are mathematically related and can be traced to one user. Should a malicious actor steal your backup, he has access to ALL CURRENT and FUTURE wallets created on the device. It is difficult for developers and users to go through a non-trivial account discovery process each time the user wishes to do anything. Based on this fact we decided to forgo deterministic hierarchical wallet generation in favor of Anonymous Independently Encrypted Private Keys. Not as catchy, but it has some important benefits for users like: very easy to use for a normal user, easy for services to implement direct support (just a public key, no account discovery), each wallet can be individually encrypted, full backups can be easily encrypted, and wallets are not traceable to a single source.
HOW BC VAULT SOLVES THE DANGER OF THEFT ATTEMPTS AND CYBER ATTACKS
“One of the first major hurdles was the one we came across while testing existing devices as TREZOR, LEDGER… which use flash memory (still today). We found a problem with testing huge amounts of different wallets. Not only was flash inconvenient from a hardware standpoint (block-only control amongst others), but it also stopped functioning after an unacceptable amount of write operations. This would lower the lifespan of BC Vault tremendously, so we decided on newest technology – FeRAM. This provided us with several advantages from a hardware point of view. It allowed our hardware experts greater control over device storage and allowed us to provide incredible value for the customer. BC Vault is unique in the fact that the device itself can be stored nearly indefinitely, i.e. in a safe, without any data loss from being unpowered, over 200 years at 35°C or 10 years at 85°C (although we don’t really recommend storing it in a place that is hot!)! That gives you longer term storage than Flash, Hard drives, Solid state drives, floppy disks and Magnetic tapes, all for free! Your funds are stored offline in cold storage to prevent cyber-attacks. We employ state-of-the-art encryption measures to make sure your private keys are secure. Private keys are encrypted and stored in FeRAM for incredible durability and reliability. This means that, if you choose so, you could leave your BC VAULT in a safe for over 10 YEARS and (assuming no external damage) your private keys would be intact. FeRAM is a (Ferroelectric Random-Access Memory) chip using the ferroelectric process and silicon gate CMOS process technologies for forming the nonvolatile memory cells.). The FeRAM is able to retain data without using a back-up battery, as is needed for SRAM. The memory cells used in the FeRAM can be used for 10^13 read/write operations per byte, which is a significant improvement over the number of read and write operations supported by Flash memory and E2PROM. FeRAM does not take long time to write data like Flash memories or E2PROM. FeRAM is able to write data at a high bandwidth without any waiting.
Your backups are also protected. even if someone were to steal your backups they would have to know your PIN and desktop password to unlock it. This is in stark contrast to BIP44/38 based hardware wallets that CANNOT encrypt their backups. BC Vault is the first commercially available multi-crypto wallet offering SECURE BACKUPS. Add to that per-wallet encryption and you can be sure your wallets will be safe!” says Alen Šalamun, CTO and co-owner of REAL security Inc..
For further press information, please contact:
Samo Zavasnik
REAL security d.o.o.
Tel: + 386 2 234 7474
samo.zavasnik@real-sec.com
For more information about BC VAULT please visit: www.bc-vault.com