The Common Pitfalls in Mobile Wallet Apps and Techniques to Enhance Wallet Security by Zhaofeng Chen

Transcript

today has um please approach ecosystem as we serve as a bit FIFA user to access and manage their assets but the main goal of this set volume is to one of the most critical assets of

mobile bodies is the security of user credentials these credentials with those demonic priming keys password and keys bind our assets and allow us to access and use them within webstery ecosystem they allow the proper detection protection of these credentials our assets are at the risk of being stolen or lost and we can no longer access or use them uh today uh what I would like to discuss the critical stress or compromise the mobile devices and its impact on mobile bodies

when we talk about a compromise device would be attacker who has gained the root privilege on the user's mobile device granting them access to the device style system and memory and these attacks can occur through various teams such as downloading malicious apps from verified sources open suspicious links are being the target of a target attacks especially if you are a high profile user this type of stress are becoming more common as we have seen cases where Android malware can be root access to a

phone and even iOS is vulnerable to a zero play iMessage attacks what's the user's device is compromised the attacker can gain new privilege and can access files in the storage including the DB files like that star user user credentials as you can see in the in the top right corner some wall is implantation a star layer making them easy to access for attackers attackers can also inspect processed

memory and extract credentials when the mobile wallets is using them for signing and authorization there are many public available primers that allow process injection and API hooking or treating if the character has the privilege so what is the key to mobile body security I think it's all about protecting the use of credentials from the creation the potential eu's address to destruction the security of the entire life cycle of user credentials must be considered

for example a protecting credentials at rest means securing ensuring that via security store in the first system and not easily accessible to a previous attacker uh in addition for uh protect is equally important this means safeguarding credential attackers from extracting credentials from device memory during the signing process so what are the existing protections you use the mobile wallets to production

user credentials there are several approaches like password encryption Hardware basis and software based Solutions each of them has its pros and cons when facing the threat of a compromised device in Falling slides I will go over each approach in detail discussing their strengths and weakness when this is a threat the first production approach for smashing is password encryption the approach aims to protect credentials at Rest by gripping them on this

uh the nutrition p is never safe on this every time before using the credential the user had to type in the puzzle the more the app saves the password in memory and then derives the encryption key from the pastel the memory at least this approach previous attackers from directly stealing the encrypted credentials on this however it does not protect credentials you use it's important to remember that in the case of a complex device attackers can read and write the process runtime memory so if the attack so the attacker can read the user type password

but you should key memory and use them to recover financials this figure shows that we have the Packers and extract the red-time memory to extract the passcode this is where Hardware back Solutions like trust trust execution environment comes into play that's available on most armed processors

it creates a secure World isolated from the normal Hardware we need this keyword uh solution environment is activists allowing the trust applications to be built and advanced security the steward is inaccessible by the previous attackers even if the normal world is not fast this provides an additional layer of security to mobile devices the application Landing in the skill road is called trusted applications trust The Trusted applications in payments and experts security related

for applications running in the normal world the overall security heavily relies on the faster application so only mobile vendors such as Samsung and Apple have the ability to deploy faster applications to provide Superior functionalities for normal World application a one well-known trusted application deployed in touch zone is called key store or keychain Kickstart is dedicated to cryptographic operations in the secure

world key now we're leaving the castle this prevents previous attackers from accessing the encryption key however they are still some drawbacks to this solution all of the importantly never leads trust though the decrypted credentials designed for generic use cases not specialized for blockchain operations only only go to store and recover credentials what's the the credentials into Power the credential is shown up in the normal

world Financial sections at this time the previous attacker can extract them from normal World memory solution is adding a building do the detection to the modeling path this means that the world implements device Integrity to determine whether the device has already been income whether it detects a compromised device it will refuse to empower the credentials however as the root detection is forward Advanced attackers can reverse

engineer the rooted rooted caption logic and alter the technicians bypass the detection what's the detection is bypass attacker can wait and until the credential being uncovered and then extracted from memory if it take one more look at figure on the right we can see that as long as the credentials are used in the in the world there's a risk of the being stolen by previous now you may be wondering what if they hold the signing process into the secure

world this is very good question Zone most into spine with his soul it ensures that user credentials never leave the secure World throughout the entire life cycle it is similar to a client a server architecture where the normal World initiates a signing request in only transaction information and everything else is completed in the trust Zone

after Sunny English Hospital only the signature is returned back to normal world making it much more secure than previous Solutions user credentials are not well protected against three original hackers however as mentioned earlier only mobile vendors currently only Samsung provides the wallets in customers called Samsung blockchain it's available on most Galaxy phones I think another example is a lot of them exactly such information might be a

significant security Advantage across another funds although I haven't received from yes it's also worth noting that designing process not only in walls using the user's credentials design but also requires users authorization and the confirmation as a result these additional attack surfaces must also be considered that's what I'm going to discuss next is about the secure UI let's take a look at the feeders on the right we're sending a transaction the user needs to confirmness in sector

details and authorizes however if the attacker controls this way it can manipulate the victim into signing off a much larger amount of tokens by showing only a small amount in screen this is where the superior UI comes in it includes a dedicated secure i o for trustworld you can display renders the screen when processor is in the secure world it ensures that the transaction details displayed on the screen of the new and the security tasks received harsh events left occurs only when processors

is in the skill secure or not it also prevents fabrication users in summary Superior involves the screen transaction details the same user permissions in the skill world so that it cannot intercept it or Modified by the previous attacker in the normal world now let's recall what quality custom solution can offer it provides key protections and secure signing in trust Zone which ensures encryption key and use credentials never leave the stress Bill and also provides secure display

and scriptage to prevent attackers from manipulating transaction details or fabricating user permissions we have talked a lot about Hardware basic protection but a lot about the software-based approach let's wear monkey party qualities credentials are separated into multiple parts and be parties even if one part of the credential is stolen attackers still cannot access the other cars held by parties

least provides bathroom credential address protection but when it comes to suggestions to use protection there are still limitations when signing a transaction remote parties must verify that the sunny will pass before allowing access before allowing access to their parts of the key because that all the information is in breakfast comes from the mobile device attackers can still Forge value transaction sending requests and use the remote keys without actually actually having access to them uh this means that even if a cracker

can't gather remote key he can still use it let's indicates that building software Therapy Solutions cannot perfectly protect credentials in use by physical compromised us threat so why not take advantage of both hardware and software business protections if we combine most party Computing and Trust Zone we can adjust the issue of partial key loss and the request forging at the same time security test must be confirmed and authorized by

the user through the stress display and and secure Securitas preventing previous attackers in the normal World from interfering the NPC standing process however we have to advance that there are currently no such protections available in markets we hope that mobile vendors will open more interfaces to support such trust application in the future in this size we compare between the security protection approaches used by popular mobile artists in the market and the evalues they are Effectiveness against the threats compromises device

to summarize household encryption protect credentials and rest but not the negative key are keeping them in a secure world but not during the study process NPC world is separates credentials in its marketable parts and distributed in multiple parties providing better credential and rest protection are still vulnerable to pass the 4G what is in person most the signing process into the secure world and use security free and secures to prevent request body provide highest

level protection against compromised devices logistical bodies to steal user credentials and assets fake Wallace can be distributed through a search engine in result Solutions I think advertising and speak the volume official websites however due to the timeline patients we're going to be discussing this threading the easy field today for more information

assertive we also developed a custom one reference implementations for book three simple system we name the product certificate is the largest open source Community for custom vendors which includes mobile devices iot devices various other and many devices however today's our code is 33 is to introduce the blockchain body use case into the and showcase for blockchain bodies on mobile and

embedded devices this project is currently underactive development and you'll be fully open source and we provide the highest level of protection for users who have three credentials and to also be the people with multiple bodies including MPC models and being immune to memory City implementation issues with this project we hope to enhance the body security for mobile vendors and Technical enthusiasts by providing a reliable reference implement we believe that this will also be a valuable contribution to the OT

community and we have to improve the security and blockchain and patients on borders field in summary we have discussed how compromise the normal devices impose a screen gun thread to web screen formulas and the importance of considering the entire life cycle is user credentials When comparing different protection approaches we also emphasize that the necessity of Hardware back abilities such as Hospital along with the secure heart and security display to protect provides device address

finally we use a certainly our project that we blockchain use cases to the largest open source processing infosystem of PE it really still be a valuable contribution community okay that's the end of my talk thanks for attending and any questions