With the vast amounts of money going around, it’s no surprise that the greater Bitcoin ecosystem is rife with scams, hacks and cyber attacks of all kinds. Operating in such an environment, cautious users are always mindful of their security and learn to avoid outrageous claims that are sometimes nothing more than just that. A recently released wallet was said to be “unhackable” by its promoters, including John McAfee, and this has naturally triggered security researchers.
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“Unhackable” Bifti Wallet
When the Bitfi hardware wallet was unveiled in June, its official promotional material called it the “first truly unhackable” wallet, promising “impenetrable security” and an operation “without any risk of loss”. It was also said to offer more security than any other type of storage, including cold storage.
Vouching for the device being indeed “unhackable”, which Bitfi acknowledged is an extremely bold claim, was John McAfee. “Of all today’s elaborate and sophisticated methods for making wallets secure and easy to use, surely none is as epic as that of the new Bitfi wallet. Several of my competitors have pioneered innovative methods to protect private keys, but Bitfi pulled out all the stops to ensure that the private key can never be obtained by illicit means. No other hardware wallet has ever been built to this level of sophistication,” McAfee is quoted as saying.
This level of sophisticated security was supposedly achieved primarily by utilizing a proprietary open-source algorithm that calculates the private key from a user’s own unique secret phrase. “The private key only exists for a fraction of a second, just long enough to approve the transaction and is never stored anywhere.” And the developers added that: “Unlike other wallets, the Bitfi
