Bitcoin Forum

"A prototype cryptocurrency point-of-sales (POS) terminal called Bitcoin Box can process transactions without the need for an Internet connection. Instead it relies on Near Field Communications (NFC) and Bluetooth to enable payments."

I think this is a great news, and in the next 5-6 years the bitcoin will be more easily to use.


Source : http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-box-can-process-payments-web-connection/

Using bluetooth? so its still vunerable to local attacks and people listening out this could be pretty bad in a high dense population as this could become a frequent attack looking out for bluetooth signals and intercepting them

Interesting possibilty , thanks for you opinion. This way it is only in the place without an internet connection.

the most important is the security system problem

if people using nfc and bluetooth,then the priority is not the transaction itself but the security

Transactions are public information and they are secure because they are signed.

There could be a danger of a MITM attack, though. The sender must be sure they are sending to the correct address.

opens up a lot of possibilities for security and vulnerability in cold wallets

Hey, NFC and Bluetooth enable some kind of an Internet connection, only less safe, less reliable, and much slower. Then, I don't know where guy who wrote this article is living, and everywhere I've been, it was easier to find an Internet connection than NFC or Bluetooth.

I would advise against Bluetooth for important data

Using Bluetooth only in near location its not efficient and the security is too risk right.

Bluetooth ha ? so I have no chance to use this Bitcoin Box in my country or local area since no one here know what Digital Currency is or what Online shopping is , even Paypal .. they don't hear of it  >:( Guess I will just stick to internet connections and trade worldwide .
I like the idea tho , It make things a lot more simple

Right. No matter what the payment system in use, NFC and Bluetooth communications have serious security problems. It's really tough authenticating securely to a device you've never seen before.

There's something to be said for credit cards with mag stripes and contact-type credit cards. They're not readable while they're inside your wallet.

The way I see it, there should be an optical interface in order to send those transactions. It's the only safe way.

if this is true this is are great news for us, maybe people dont want to use bluetooth and i understand it, using it is a risk for our security, but dont forget that this is still in develop/prototype so who know what will happend with the final product ;)

Btw It is a thing that bitcoin users care a lot, so i hope they improved it a lot before they release it.

Something which I don't get is how does the transaction get written to the blockchain to be validated by the network. For example, if let's say two smartphones exchange bitcoins via NFC, then in this scenario, how does the transaction get confirmed?

The security is pretty weak, don't you think? I mean the possibility of someone unwanted getting access is very common and the biggest question is how is it get confirmed by the network !!!

Interesting read, as mentioned already; it'll be interesting to see how they handle the security aspect.

So  in this way is it not "secure" ?  hmmm I thought it was a great idea , but with the bluetooth it is not secure.... you are right.

Why is Bluetooth insecure for Bitcoin transactions? I don't understand. Transactions are already sent signed, so it's not like someone could tamper them, or can they?

I don't know if it is possible "tamper" a transaction when it was sent, maybe you can modify it before but not  during/after the sending.

OK, so sending the transaction via Bluetooth is secure. Is there something I'm missing? Maybe the other ones who said it's insecure can answer me.

If the channel is not encrypted regardless if it's bluetooth, the internet or nfc the data exchanged can be tampered.

I would like to  read a reply from those users that have told it is not secure , can you explain better ? Thanks.

That's a good invention.
No one's gonna steal your coin in this way!
But how does one send coin if the wallet has long been offline? (No information of TX in)

After reading more about this, I found the title confusing. I assumed the merchant could somehow process a payment without a web connection.

But the merchant needs a web connection and the user can sign a transaction and pay without a web connection, sending the signed payment over Bluetooth.

But if you have a cell phone, it is very likely that you already have an Internet connection.

If it could be done where the merchant does not need a connection, that would be revolutionary. I have no idea how it would be done though.

I think this will change almost everything, as it will allow merchants in poor parts of the world without a net connection to accept payments as well, and later like in a bank get it converted to fiat.
However the volatility would have to be stable at that point.

The title is misleading...the merchant needs a net connection.

As I understand :


The buyer doesn't need an internet connection , but the seller (merchant) should have an internet connection. 

Here a demonstration :


- http://andyschroder.com/BitcoinFluidDispenser/

what a brilliant idea! Can´t wait to see that feature!

Well, this is still first version of bitcoin box. Over the years they will probably find the way for security issues and stuff like that, but anyway great news.

Yes, but Bitcoin transactions are signed, so any tampering between the sender and the receiver would result in an invalid transaction, right?

Or maybe the hacker just replaces the transaction with an entirely different one, which makes no sense to me, since they can just send it from the beginning anyway.

That's the basic problem with authenticating to a new device via an omnidirectional radio signal. You don't really know who you're talking to, and you have no shared secret prior to authenticating.

so ,if I have understood it

This transmits the tx to the network instead of waiting to receive it, isn't it?

So this system is not "secure" .... Maybe they will change way  , I don't know.

I wouldn't be 100% confident to say no attacks are possible, remains to be seen, tested, audited properly.

and hope we will see much more variety of Process Payments to experiment with in the near future.

From there I presume once the transaction between two parties is done via nfc is completed, the merchant will then need to broadcast to the network for it to get written to the blockchain. But what if before that was done, can the sender perform a double spend?