BeatCoin: Leaking Private Keys from Air-Gapped Cryptocurrency Wallets
This work addresses a critical security issue for cryptocurrency users relying on cold wallets, showing that even isolated systems are vulnerable to sophisticated attacks.
The paper tackles the problem of securing private keys in air-gapped cryptocurrency wallets by demonstrating that attackers can exfiltrate these keys using various covert channel techniques, such as electromagnetic or acoustic methods, within seconds.
Cryptocurrency wallets store the wallets private key(s), and hence, are a lucrative target for attackers. With possession of the private key, an attacker virtually owns all of the currency in the compromised wallet. Managing cryptocurrency wallets offline, in isolated ('air-gapped') computers, has been suggested in order to secure the private keys from theft. Such air-gapped wallets are often referred to as 'cold wallets.' In this paper, we show how private keys can be exfiltrated from air-gapped wallets. In the adversarial attack model, the attacker infiltrates the offline wallet, infecting it with malicious code. The malware can be preinstalled or pushed in during the initial installation of the wallet, or it can infect the system when removable media (e.g., USB flash drive) is inserted into the wallet's computer in order to sign a transaction. These attack vectors have repeatedly been proven feasible in the last decade (e.g., [1],[2],[3],[4],[5],[6],[7],[8],[9],[10]). Having obtained a foothold in the wallet, an attacker can utilize various air-gap covert channel techniques (bridgeware [11]) to jump the airgap and exfiltrate the wallets private keys. We evaluate various exfiltration techniques, including physical, electromagnetic, electric, magnetic, acoustic, optical, and thermal techniques. This research shows that although cold wallets provide a high degree of isolation, it is not beyond the capability of motivated attackers to compromise such wallets and steal private keys from them. We demonstrate how a 256-bit private key (e.g., bitcoin's private keys) can be exfiltrated from an offline, air-gapped wallet of a fictional character named Satoshi within a matter of seconds