Ledger, the company behind popular cryptocurrency hardware wallets, has taken another step towards transparency and open-sourcing its development by publishing the Ledger Recover White Paper.
The White Paper details the technical specifications of Ledger Recover, a service that will allow users to back up and restore their Ledger device’s Secret Recovery Phrase.
Ledger Announces Secure Recovery Tool
According to Ledger’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Charles Guillemet, the Recover service, provided by Coincover, is set to launch in Q4 2023 and is designed to be 100% secure.
The White Paper provides readers with a thorough examination of the system design and cryptographic protocol, as well as details on the operational flows of backing up, restoring, and securely deleting backups of the Secret Recovery Phrase.
Per the announcement, the service is built on a framework that ensures end-to-end encryption between the Ledger device and the backup provider’s Hardware Security Module (HSM).
The Secret Recovery Phrase is encrypted using a Ledger fixed key before being split and provided to the backup providers using a secure channel based on an Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) exchange. Using a variant of Shamir Secret Sharing ensures that no intermediary system can intercept the information.
Guillemet stated, “Uncompromising security and self-custody will always be at the core of what we build at Ledger”. The company has already implemented over 150 open-source apps and other enablements and hopes that the publication of the Ledger Recover White Paper will allow anyone to audit the cryptographic protocols used in the service.
The white paper is available for review on the firm’s GitHub repository, and the company encourages developers, researchers, and crypto-enthusiasts to read it in detail to understand the underlying cryptographic protocol of the Recover program. Feedback is welcomed and encouraged, and the company is excited to hear constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement.
In addition to the white paper, the company has announced the upcoming publication of a series of blog posts, The Genesis of Ledger Recover, written by different project leaders.
This series will delve further into design choices, the thinking process behind the project, operational security features, and an in-depth look at the product’s security reviews conducted throughout the development of the company’s Recover program.
The publication of this series is set for Summer 2023, and the company is looking forward to sharing more about this exciting project with its community.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView.com