Wallet Logo

ColdLar Pro 3

🔍 Last analysed 26th November 2021 . No source for current release found

Jump to verdict 

Help spread awareness for build reproducibility

Please help us spread the word discussing transparency with ColdLar Pro 3  via their Twitter!

Do your own research!

Try out searching for "lost bitcoins", "stole my money" or "scammers" together with the wallet's name, even if you think the wallet is generally trustworthy. For all the bigger wallets you will find accusations. Make sure you understand why they were made and if you are comfortable with the provider's reaction.

If you find something we should include, you can create an issue or edit this analysis yourself and create a merge request for your changes.

The Analysis 

Private keys can be created offline - ✔️

From the Licensing Agreement:

“Cold wallet” refers to the wallet product that stores the private keys of digital asset and does not connect the internet.

This is an offline wallet.

Recovery phrase” refers to 12 (or 15/18/21/24) ordered words generated by random algorithm that meet the industry standard of block chain BIP39. It is an easy-to-record form of private key, convenient to backup and safekeeping for the User. It is also known as “seed password” in some ColdLar wallet products.

Users are also told to backup the recovery phrase in a safe place on paper.

It is suggested that the user transcribe the recovery phrase the paper backup card tailored by ColdLar and keep it properly. And for recovery phrase, it is specially noted that the User is prohibited to input the electronic version on any web page, transmit it via network-based means, photograph it with mobile phone and store it (including but not limited to: screenshot, e-mail, Notebook in mobile phone, short message, WeChat and QQ).

Private keys are not shared - ✔️

Coldlar also states that it has no access to the private keys.

The products provided by ColdLar do not store the recovery phrase and passwords of users, so they cannot help retrieve the recovery phrase and passwords.

Interface

We see in the promotional video that this hardware wallet supposedly has a screen interface.

Guide on how to send crypto.

Reproducibility

There was no mention of source code, other than this section on the same Licensing Agreement, Article 4.3:

Without the explicit written authorization and consent of ColdLar, the User shall not copy, translate, decompose, reversely compile, disassemble, reversely engineer the licensing software or any part thereof in any way, or attempt to export the program source code from the licensing software, or write or develop derivative software, derivatives or other software based on the licensing software.

Coldlar does not have a link to any Github repository. It does not advertise itself as an open-source product.

We conclude that there is no publicly available source for verification.

(ml, dg)

Verdict Explained

Without public source of the reviewed release available, this product cannot be verified!

As part of our Methodology, we ask:

No Source!

Is the source code publicly available?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "No source for current release found".

A wallet that claims to not give the provider the means to steal the users’ funds might actually be lying. In the spirit of “Don’t trust - verify!” you don’t want to take the provider at his word, but trust that people hunting for fame and bug bounties could actually find flaws and back-doors in the wallet so the provider doesn’t dare to put these in.

Back-doors and flaws are frequently found in closed source products but some remain hidden for years. And even in open source security software there might be catastrophic flaws undiscovered for years.

An evil wallet provider would certainly prefer not to publish the code, as hiding it makes audits orders of magnitude harder.

For your security, you thus want the code to be available for review.

If the wallet provider doesn’t share up to date code, our analysis stops there as the wallet could steal your funds at any time, and there is no protection except the provider’s word.

“Up to date” strictly means that any instance of the product being updated without the source code being updated counts as closed source. This puts the burden on the provider to always first release the source code before releasing the product’s update. This paragraph is a clarification to our rules following a little poll.

We are not concerned about the license as long as it allows us to perform our analysis. For a security audit, it is not necessary that the provider allows others to use their code for a competing wallet. You should still prefer actual open source licenses as a competing wallet won’t use the code without giving it careful scrutiny.

The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.