What makes ledger wallets secure

Ledger钱包下载 you are assured of security. Just the way you cannot build a vault using lego bricks, you will not be able to build a hardware that is secure using the components that are taken from the coffee machine.

The ledger tends to have built its devices on specialized chips that are known as Secure Elements, and designed BOLOS – a secure operating system that is engineered in order to leverage the unique security capabilities.

What is a secure element?

To build an electronic device that is complex like hardware wallet, it means that, you will need to have a micro controller. It might be the same thing as the computer processor or the smartphone but on a scale which is small.  There exist two types of microcontrollers:

  • The one considered to be normal which is utilized in hobbyist drone, microwave, or the TV remote controller. It is known as a microcontroller unit or otherwise MCU.
  • The secure type is utilized in payment cards, passports or simcards. It is known as the SE or secure element.

From the above, you can see that the secure element are mostly used in mission environments that are critical where assets considered to be important like identity or money are all at stake.

The origins

From the inception of the information technology, security has been considered to be a game of the cat and mouse between the proponents of the modern system and the hackers who want to disrupt them.

With the payment advent or the telecom networks, the security scope has really evolved from mainframes that were heavily guarded to the endpoints which are widely distributed like the SIM cards found on phones, electronic systems for toll collection or the set top boxes.

Massive efforts have greatly been placed into having to secure such endpoints, ensuring that they are not counterfeit in anyway. The famous example that is utilized is the smart card which was introduced in the 80s in Europe and at the moment, utilized for payment network security all over the world.

The smart cards are made in a way that they give out security of the highest level in the worst attack case where the attackers happen to have an access to the device that is physical. For it to be scaled globally, the payment cards need to be very secure and thus, how are they made different from the electronic card which is normal, the answer could simply be that, they have been built on a secure element which leverages the security features that are unique.

The security of the hardware

A secure element is normally microcontroller that is hardened with a few interfaces that are to the world outside, thereby reducing the surface for attack to its minimum. The way it is seen earlier, the system’s integrity is very important and there is specific engineering which have to be applied to the system to make it resistant to tampering. A SE has to embed physical protections that are strong so that the complex hardware attacks are mitigated.