A spendable cold wallet from QR video

Rafael Baiao Dowsley, Mylene C.Q. Farias, Mario Larangeira, Anderson C.A. Nascimento, Jot Virdee

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference PaperResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Hot/cold wallet refers to a widely used paradigm to enhance the security level of cryptocurrency applications that was proposed on Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 32. In a nutshell, after performing an initial setup in which the hot wallet receives partial information of the cold wallet in order to hierarchically generate (transaction receiving) addresses, the cold wallet stays offline, whereas the hot wallet is kept online. The initial transferred information enables the hot wallet to generate receiving addresses for both wallets, but it can only spend its own funds, i.e., it cannot spend the funds in the cold wallet. This design conveniently mimics money storage in daily life: pocket money is kept in a less safe location, e.g., a regular wallet, while life savings are kept in a more safe environment, e.g., banking account. Note that the funds that land in offline addresses cannot be spent if the cold wallet is kept permanently offline. We propose a protocol and a technical solution to spend funds from a cold wallet without physically connecting it to any network. We designed and implemented a prototype for a system based on Optical Camera Communication (OCC) in a screen to camera setting, which can receive messages from a computer screen at the rate of over 150kB per second. Our system consists of a sequence of QR codes – a QR video. Our solution minimizes the possible attack vectors, including malware, by relying on optical communication yet providing a larger bandwidth than regular QR code based solutions.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 19th International Conference on Security and Cryptography, SECRYPT 2022, Lisbon, Portugal, July 11-13, 2022
EditorsSabrina De Capitani di Vimercati, Pierangela Samarati
Place of PublicationMilano Italy
PublisherScitepress
Pages283-290
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)9789897585906
ISBN (Print)9789897585906
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022
EventInternational Conference on Security and Cryptography 2022 - Lisbon, Portugal
Duration: 11 Jul 202213 Jul 2022
Conference number: 19th
https://www.scitepress.org/ProceedingsDetails.aspx?ID=s9ar+Z8WC/I=&t=1 (Proceedings)
https://secrypt.scitevents.org/?y=2022 (Website)

Conference

ConferenceInternational Conference on Security and Cryptography 2022
Abbreviated titleSECRYPT 2022
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityLisbon
Period11/07/2213/07/22
Internet address

Keywords

  • Digital Wallet
  • Cryptocurrency
  • Blockchain
  • QR Code

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