crypto security

Ledger has been the center of attention since the announcement of their new “Recover” feature which has brought into question how secure our Ledger devices actually are. 

Charles joins us to walk through how exactly this recover feature functions, breaking down how a Ledger actually functions, and possible paths moving forward.

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Topics Covered

0:00 Intro
6:21 Ledger's Recover Service Overview
18:40 Is Ledger Recover Forced or Opt-In?
23:07 Dissecting a Ledger Device
29:41 Can Firmware Reveal Private Keys?
36:54 A Social Contract With Ledger
42:31 Assurance Of No Back Door
51:16 2-Part Firmware Solution?
57:42 Will Ledger Forget About Us?
1:02:46 Closing and Disclaimers

———
Resources:

Charles 
https://twitter.com/P3b7_ 

Ledger
https://twitter.com/ledger 

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Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures 

Chris Tarbell is a former FBI Agent specializing in cyber investigations. While at the FBI, Chris led some of the most high-profile cybercrime investigations in the world, including the arrest of members of the hacker group LulzSec, as well as the founder of the Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, which resulted in the largest seizure of bitcoins to date.

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✨ DEBRIEF | Unpacking the episode: 
https://www.bankless.com/debrief-the-fbi-agent-who-took-down-the-silk-road 
 
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✨ COLLECTIBLES | Collect this episode: 
https://collectibles.bankless.com/mint 

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Rarely do we have the opportunity to pick the brain of a cybercop, but this was our opportunity to see through the eyes of the FBI agent who took down the Silk Road in the largest crypto seizure ever recorded.

In today’s episode, Chris shares the story of crypto, Ross Ulbricht, and the Silk Road as told by the FBI agent who took it down. We also dig into the eternal cat-and-mouse game between Cybercriminals and Cyberpolice, how to protect yourself from people who want to take your crypto, and if the FBI wants your private keys, how they get them. 

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Topics Covered

0:00 Intro
9:10  Bitcoin Predictions 
10:08 FBI’s Crypto Impression
11:15 Chris’s Crypto Aha Moment 
16:11 FBI’s Institutional Knowledge
17:00 Silk Road Story 
21:25 FBI Divisions 
27:14 Growth of the Silk Road 
30:39 Purchasing on the Silk Road
31:36 Why End the Silk Road?
34:17 Ross Ulbricht
37:38 Timeline of the Investigation 
39:00  Dread Pirate Roberts
42:20 Ross Ulbricht as a Martyr
43:27 What Ross Was Charged With?
44:05 Chris’s Thoughts on Ross?
46:30 Sabu vs. Ross
48:05 Other Charges 
50:53 Silk Road Principles 
52:45 Silk Road Bitcoin Vault
54:53 Seizing the Laptop 
56:04 The Black Marketplace Wave 
57:32 FBI Adapting 
1:00:52 Cyber Police 
1:03:26 What Chris Sees in Crypto 
1:06:30 Bursting the Crypto Utopia 
1:10:59 Crypto Tools 
1:12:11 Steelmanning the Crypto Case 
1:15:39 Tornado Cash
1:17:58 Hive Ransomware
1:21:05 Profile of a Hacker 
1:22:21 The New Frontier of Ransomware
1:22:38 Nationstate Actors 
1:25:04 Honeypots for Hackers
1:27:49 How to Protect Yourself
1:32:06 Prioritizing Targets 
1:36:00 zkProofs & Privatization
1:39:32 Missing Silk Road Bitcoin Story 
1:43:46 Chris’s Podcast
1:45:10 Closing & Disclaimers 

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Resources:

Hacker and the Fed
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hacker-and-the-fed/id1649541362 

Naxo
https://www.naxo.com/ 

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Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures 

Charles Guillemet is the CTO at Ledger with a highly experienced background in cryptography 
and hardware security. 

In today’s episode, Charles walks through all levels of security. No matter if you’re just beginning your wallet security journey or if youre a veteran, this episode will teach you something new about all things crypto and wallet security. 

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⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM
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👻 PHANTOM | #1 SOLANA WALLET
https://bankless.cc/phantom-waitlist  

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Topics Covered

0:00 Intro
5:52 CTO of Ledger
8:35 Private Keys 
17:25 Avoiding Bad Entropy 
23:11 Private Keys & Seed Phrases
29:00 Mistakes Storing Seed Phrases
36:55 Securing Your Seed Phrase 
45:00 Overengineer Wallet Security
47:55 Cold vs. Hot Wallets 
54:22 Benefits of Hot Wallets 
58:47 Smart Contract Risk 
1:06:45 Allowances 
1:11:30 Allowance Access 
1:14:00 Blind Signing 
1:18:00 Solution to Blind Signing 
1:21:38 Resources to Learn More
1:22:22 Closing & Disclaimers 

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Resources:

Charles Guillemet
https://twitter.com/P3b7_ 

Ledger
https://twitter.com/Ledger 

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Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures 

In which Scott returns from vacation right as Jordan is leaving, and they talk about the episodes Scott missed over the summer. New listener? Definitely don't start with this one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sunny Madra and Vinny Lingham join Jason for a fully loaded crypto market breakdown (1:40). Topics covered include: Tornado Cash being blacklisted by the US Treasury Dept, Coinbase Q2 earnings, smart crypto regulation, fixing early-stage crypto governance, and more! Jason wraps the show with Part 5 of The Blueprint: Generalists vs. Specialists. (1:21:44)

(0:00) Jason intros today's segments: crypto roundtable and The Blueprint!

(1:40) Current state of the crypto market after the massive pullback

(14:31) Brave - Download today at https://brave.com/twist to browse faster, search privately and so much more

(15:33 Tornado Cash blacklisted by the US Treasury Dept: what is it, what it means for "frozen" crypto assets & more

(27:12) LinkedIn Marketing -  Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at https://linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups

(28:36) How large-scale spam attacks and hacks will change consumer behavior in the still-early crypto industry

(37:37) Visa - Learn more about Visa’s online Small Business Hub at Visa.com/smallbusinesshub

(38:32) How should crypto be regulated? Should the US create a new agency dedicated to digital assets? Should there be a new set of rules for crypto?

(48:39) Did Coinbase let customers down? $COIN Q2 earnings, responsibilities to customers, what Coinbase's platform might look like if altcoins are regulated as securities

(55:22) Pseudonymous and anonymous impact on high-profile crypto projects, how to fix early-stage crypto governance

(1:04:12 Interesting consumer-facing crypto projects

(1:21:44) The Blueprint Part 5: Generalists vs. Specialists

Earlier this month, Coinbase users were shocked to read a new disclosure from the company that could cost users everything. Nicole breaks down this headline, and how it unlocks the answer to a key crypto debate. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode we talk with a guy named “Drew” who gives us a rare peek into what some of the young hackers are up to today. From listening to Drew, we can see that times are changing for the motive behind hacking. In the ’90s and ’00s it was done for fun and curiosity. In the ’10s Anonymous showed us what Hacktivism is. And now, in the ’20s, the young hackers seem to be profit driven. Sponsors Support for this show comes from Linode. Linode supplies you with virtual servers. Visit linode.com/darknet and get a special offer. Support for this show comes from Juniper Networks. Juniper Networks is dedicated to simplifying network operations and driving superior experiences for end users. Visit juniper.net/darknet to learn more about how Juniper Secure Edge can help you keep your remote workforce seamlessly secure wherever they are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s episode is all about crypto security — that is, the new mindsets and the new strategies for storing crypto assets safely while also allowing holders control and access. As a reminder, none of the following should be taken as investment advice, please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information. We’ve covered security trends more broadly a ton in our content, which you can find at a16z.com/security, as well as crypto-related trends including NFTs, and the creator and ownership economies; you can find all of that at a16z.com/nfts But as more people enter crypto lately — thanks to the boom in NFTs, decentralized finance, and much more — we share specific best practices and options for securing crypto as well as discussing how it all fits this next evolution of the internet: web3. Our expert today is a16z crypto data scientist Eddy Lazzarin, who joins host Zoran Basich to cover practical approaches ranging from passwords to crypto wallets and what users can do; the evolution of crypto briefly; and the big picture mindset shifts involved here as well. We quickly begin with the practical shift crypto security represents compared to how people interact with traditional financial institutions, and then we go into the big picture trends in security when it comes to abstraction and usability.

Phil Daian is a researcher and software engineer and is leading the charge into mapping MEV with the Flashbots Project. Georgios Konstantopoulos and Charlie Noyes are both partners at Paradigm.

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Bankless Podcast #66: MEV Panel
Guests: Charlie Noyes, Phil Daian, & Georgios Konstantopolous

In this State of the Nation, we bring on big-brain experts behind projects like Paradigm and Flashbots to explain the complex but critical topic of MEV - commonly known as Miner Extractable Value, but as discussed in this episode, Maximum Extractable Value is a more appropriate descriptor. MEV is arguably the single most important unsolved problem in the crypto space.

In the context of incentives and network security, MEV generally refers to the ability of miners & validators to take advantage of their position as securers of the network. Blocks are verified by single entities, and these block producers have tremendous power when they are the ones adding a particular block to the blockchain. We refer to this instance as ‘God-Mode,’ in which a node has the power to assemble & order transactions at will. The threat here is the potential gaps between what is best for the network and what is best for the node.

As an internal and unbounded threat to blockchains, solving the problems that MEV presents is critical to maintaining proper consensus and ensuring decentralization and permissionless access. We take a deep dive into potential solutions, and the impact of EIP-1559 and Proof-of-Stake on MEV. Dive in to learn why despite the challenges ahead, Charlie says:

“In the absence of certainty, I’m willing to take the optimistic perspective.”

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Resources:

Phil on Twitter
https://twitter.com/phildaian?s=20 
Georgios on Twitter
https://twitter.com/gakonst?s=20 
Charlie on Twitter
https://twitter.com/_charlienoyes?s=20 
Exploring Ethereum’s Dark Forest with Dan Robinson
https://youtu.be/MtpRDqrCfbc 
Investing in DeFi Paradigms with Charlie Noyes
https://youtu.be/dQOhbb5HmLA 

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Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here:
https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures