SecuXCryptocurrency Hardware Wallet –Surfing the Convenience on a military-level Security Chip

Sandra MosleyJune 2, 2021

1,417 7 minutes read

Miscellaneous cheat tricks have never waned, nor faded through thousands of empires and dynasties in human history. Beginning with the phone phreaks in the 70s, hackers or crackers became a real walk of life and a beneficial business along with the rise of the internet. In the meantime, the prevailing digitalization of data of all the information and records of modern citizenship nourishes the profits of this line.

Owning a bank account means you may trust the bank clerks, but not the security of the bank. Bank robbery is no longer appealing to those who can easily take away a huge sum of money while sitting on an air-conditioning couch. Paying the tax online seems a good idea, but you might sacrifice the potential hacking for convenience. A digital citizen identification (eID) will definitely put the GDPR more at risk. The credit card fraud or the data breach may be claimed for fair compensation, however, you have to be on your own when you hold a crypto account on the exchange.

I don’t want to continue to harp on the hacking histories on the exchanges iteratively during the past few years. Most clever investors know very well how to adopt a hardware wallet to keep their crypto assets.

Once and for all, to get rid of the hackers stealing your cryptocurrencies in the exchange is to keep them offline completely. Despite all the cryptocurrencies being no more than a set of digits on the blockchains, and the transaction data has hunveils the amount of the cryptocurrencies on the blockchain explorer transparently yet anonymously. The real crypto-assets holder is the only user to transfer to another address (transaction) with the private key.

Many hardware wallets provide offline storage or a no-touching scenario for the users to transfer their crypto-assets from the Exchange to a hardware wallet. Once it is done, the users can really sigh in relief for a pleasant sleep. Furthermore, it could also support the users to transact peer-to-peer to another address, manage their crypto accounts, and so on. Nevertheless, it differs a lot in manipulating their crypto-assets on the device that each hardware wallet has its unique proprietary firmware to execute the device. Theoretically speaking, the more complicated procedures to send/receive the crypto-assets on the wallet come with more secure preventions from hacking behaviors, such as cyber-attacks, malware, man-in-the-middle hacking, physical attack on the device, stealing away the wallet, phishing sites, etc. You may imagine to design a comprehensive hardware wallet it shall consider all the potential and possible scenarios the careless users will behave and the sly crackers may act snakingly around corners on the hardware wallet holders at all times. Is there any chance to get a truly secure yet simple-to-use hardware wallet?

[User Friendly UX]

The most attractive feature of SecuXWallet is a 2.8” color touchscreen. Unlike other famous brand hardware wallets, I can intuitively finger-tip on the panel to create the accounts, add coins/tokens, send the funds, and view the full address at a glance on the screen. The receiving address can be shown as a QR code! Not worth mentioning that 4 accounts can be shown on 1 page of the device. It is a clear view of all my crypto assets! I feel much happier about myself when using a modern 3C gadget! J I notice that I can rename each of my crypto accounts on the portfolio and every time the onscreen keypad is randomly reallocated for the Device PIN access into the portfolio after an idle time, this is undoubtedly an attentive design in case a peeping tom for stealing the user’s funds. (The SecuX mobile iOS app doesn’t support renaming asset accounts for the time being.)

[Physical Verification]

I started to learn why it requires a large screen on the device. When I am going to send funds to my associate as a test, the device appears as an instant OTP when pairing with a mobile phone, I need to key in the correct OTP to confirm the pairing is correct. Then I can use the mobile camera to capture the recipient’s address without key-in the long letters and digits, after that, I have to see if the actual address on the device is exactly the same as on the host device. Later on, I had to tap to confirm the sending on my own wallet. This behavior is rigorous in that maybe once in a lifetime, there is malware installed in your friends’ or associates’ mobile phones and you just took it as a random host device, it could create another recipient address to induce the sender to transfer the funds to the cracker’s wallet. They call it a man-in-the-middle hacking.

[Account Recoverability]

I won’t be surprised that SecuX Wallet is fully compliant with BIP32, BIP39 and BIP44, which are able to recover existing accounts from the standard 12, 18, or 24-word passphrases. That means you can easily swap your hardware wallet for another one built in the same portal from Bitcoin.org, even once a week for the new models on the market. J

[Hidden Wallet]

A SecuX hardware wallet can generate a private key randomly from its microcontroller unit (MCU), which is your distinctive key to keep all the crypto coins/tokens you hold on the blockchains. Another key is possible to be generated from the Device/Portfolio/Settings/Hidden Wallet if you would like to create it as an option.

[Military-grade Secure Element]

SecuX Wallet is equipped with an Infineon Solid Flash CC EAL5+ Security Chip to safeguard the users’ Wallet PIN and Private Key. Such a security level is even higher than most banking systems to prevent any cyber and physical attack from malicious crackers. Meanwhile, there are SecuX Wallet proprietary secret channels between MCU, Security Chip and Wallet App that communicate with the strictest authentications to secure the crypto-assets with zero probability leakage from the PIN/KEY generation till the transactions are completed.

[SecuXess – a Chrome OS Web App]

Nowadays Google Chrome definitely domains the web browser market nearly 70%. SecuX Walletadopts is a web application that is designed to manage the hardware wallet passively through a host device, a PC or an Android phone. It is similar to a cloud portal accessing the blockchain in that you may retrieve all your crypto-assets through the nodes of the blockchain from anywhere and anytime. Meanwhile, Brave and Opera browsers are built on the Chrome OS that is compatible with SecuX crypto hardware wallets.

[Cross-platform Wallet]

SecuX Wallet is compatible with most of the host devices running in major operating systems such as Windows OS, Chrome OS, Mac OS, Linux, Android and iOS on Desktop PCs, Laptop PC, Chromebooks, Tablet and Mobile phones. Even if I am using a Windows 7 PC, I still can download the Windows 7 driver and have a smooth operation. (W10 doesn’t support OTG and Bluetooth for the time being)

[Wireless and Its Security]

Besides the USB connection, if you own V20/W20, they are equipped with a Bluetooth5 low energy chip which is 2x bandwidth, 4x range and 8xbroadcasting message capacity than BLE4.2. Once it is paired with your mobile device or PC, you have to confirm the instant OTP (One-Time-Password) from your host device positively with no leaking security of any host device for further transactions. Many users asked me about the security of Bluetooth data transmission, I would say that the latest Bluetooth technology has AES-256 encryption standards to give the absolute security of the data transmission environment between the host device and the hardware wallet.

[Battery Life]

Normally a big screen comes with a big battery, so it does the V20 and W20. They are all embedded with a 600mAh rechargeable Li-polymer battery that requires for about 2 hrs. for full charging after the unboxing. You can use it continuously for around 7 hrs. and shall last for about 6 months of cold storage. During this period, you can review the account balance when booting up the wallet anytime.

[Coin Support &Account Expandability]

SecuX Technology’s official statement proclaims that SecuX Wallet can store up to 500 crypto accounts, although their devices support only 12 crypto-coins that include Bitcoin BTC, Ethereum ETH, Litecoin LTC, Ripple XRP, Bitcoin Cash BCH, Binance BNB, Tron TRX, Dash coin DASH, Dogecoin DOGE, Stellar XLM, DigiByte DGB, Groestlcoin GRS, and all Ethereum ERC-20 / Tron TRC-20 and TRC-10 Tokens(Total more than +1,000 Tokens including Tether USDT, Uniswap UNI, Chainlink LINK, Coinbase USDC, Theta THETA, Vechin VEN, BitTorrent BTT, etc.) for the time being. That means if I can add manually ERC-20/TRC-20/TRC-10 Tokens one by one up to nearly 500 accounts mixed with the various ERC-20/TRC-20/TRC-10 Tokens. The most benefit for me is that I can recall my remaining balance on the device at all times even it is in an offline mode.

[Buy Crypto]

This is a new feature of SecuX Wallet that users can just click one button to buy the crypto coins/tokens immediately on the SecuX Wallet Web App and SecuX Mobile App through Coinify to store them offline. Coinify will charge the same for those users to buy the crypto coins/tokens either via the SecuX solution or a software wallet on Coinify. Now Coinify serves over 50 countries worldwide with Visa, Mastercard, SEPA support you may Buy BTC, BCH, ETH, USDT and XLM via SecuX solution by one click.

[Zero Vulnerability]

From the official website of SecuX, a 360∘comprehensive multi-layered shield design expresses explicitly the SecuX Wallet starts from a simple concept that takes all details into account. There are all possible leakages from the beginning of a hardware wallet, such as its supply chains, engineering designs, production flows and producing processes to the warehouse storage, packing with anti-tampering stickers, logistics, and so on. In a way, the most impregnable hardware wallet is born to prevent the users’ crypto-assets from virus implanting, physical invasion, cyber hacking, clone swapping, man-in-the-middle malware, etc.

[Conclusion]

I would highly recommend the SecuX crypto hardware wallet for all kinds of cryptocurrency holders unless you have large amounts for the Alt-coins. According to the SecuX Team, the coins and tokens at the moment are “natively” supported. Perhaps this concept slows down the speed of adding more coins and tokens in their R&D development. Yet I do respect the insistence and consistency toward their design. For example, I can send my Stellar Lumens from a native-support wallet without the domain redirection through a linking icon. It is simply convenient for the coin holders to transact the assets from a universal UI hardware wallet. Last but not least, I list the advantages and disadvantages of SecuX Wallet as follows:

Cons—

Lesser coins support (SecuX people said they will add more coins support shortly)
Bit bulky size in a jeans pocket(a trade-off for a much larger screen)

Pros—