[ANN] SmartBTC: a "Pretty safe Bitcoin Wallet" with keys on a standard smartcard

[pkcs11btc]

Cryptographic Smartcards stores the private keys on a chip on the card. A smartcard include specialized hardware that performs crypto algorithms (RSA, DSA, ECC) to do all the operations on the card. It also generate the key pair (public + private key) on board. By design there usually isn't a way to extract private keys from a smart card. Such smart cards are mainly used for digital signatures and secure identification. *So it is a very usefull, secure and cheap tool for signing bitcoin transactions*!
Because I could not find a solution (a "wallet") built on a general purpose smartcard (a so called PKCS#11 type), I decided to write a simple Python programm for Linux (open source) to do Bitcoin transactions with a smartcard. The same smartcard that I can also use for ssh-login and signing or encryption.

For more information see www.smartbtc.eu

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[MyBTT]

So... A cros between a Yubikey and a ledger wallet? The ability to send and store bitcoin or more accurately, private keys, on the smart card?

[merelcoin]

I browsed trough your site, and if i get this correct, you're basically building a very, very cheap hardware wallet using a keycard and a keycard reader.

Altough i haven't reviewed your code, the idear itself sounds pretty neat...

So basically, you could buy a complete stick from here http://www.cardomatic.de/SmartCard-HSM/en for about 60 euro and convert it in a hardware wallet yourself. Or you could go for a 18 euro card if you have a suitable cardreader.

[MyBTT]

I browsed trough your site, and if i get this correct, you're basically building a very, very cheap hardware wallet using a keycard and a keycard reader.

Altough i haven't reviewed your code, the idear itself sounds pretty neat...

So basically, you could buy a complete stick from here http://www.cardomatic.de/SmartCard-HSM/en for about 60 euro and convert it in a hardware wallet yourself. Or you could go for a 18 euro card if you have a suitable cardreader.

OR you could get the equivalent from a trusted seller at https://www.ledgerwallet.com, for fifteen pounds. I have one and it works awesomely.

[merelcoin]

I browsed trough your site, and if i get this correct, you're basically building a very, very cheap hardware wallet using a keycard and a keycard reader.

Altough i haven't reviewed your code, the idear itself sounds pretty neat...

So basically, you could buy a complete stick from here http://www.cardomatic.de/SmartCard-HSM/en for about 60 euro and convert it in a hardware wallet yourself. Or you could go for a 18 euro card if you have a suitable cardreader.

OR you could get the equivalent from a trusted seller at https://www.ledgerwallet.com, for fifteen pounds. I have one and it works awesomely.

I have one to, a nano, i've been using it for a couple of months now.  But still, i think this is a neat project...
The complete sourcecode is only 1041 lines (including blanks and comments), and it seems to be pretty clean, so anybody with sufficient python experience could modify it to suit their own needs... Basically build upon the OP's work to create a hardware wallet that is exactly adapted to their own way of living.

BTW: this is not a vouch, i only quickly glanced over the sourcecode, i haven't really inspected it so far.

[btchip]

It's always nice to see more smartcard oriented projects, but the main drawback from this approach (and the reason why we started designing our own Operating System and apps) is that a generic PKCS-11 card will have no way to provide the user with a validation mechanism for what's getting signed or enforce some security settings (such as a maximum payable amount) itself.