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Husky HDW20

🔍 Last analysed 18th February 2022 . No source for current release found
23rd February 2021

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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 

The device can connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi. It also comes with a companion app:

Advertised features

  • 2 Core, 240 MHz Microcontrollers
  • 2.8 LED Display
  • Capacitative Touch Screen
  • Long Range Wi-Fi connection
  • Connects with Phone or PC
  • Over-the-air firmware updates
  • Updates sent straight to device
  • A long-range Wi-Fi connection allows sending Bitcoins from any device at your home network.

Verdict

The device can connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi. The firmware is also updated via the Wi-Fi connection “straight to the device”. Needless to say, while internet connection adds convenience, it also increases the attack surface.

We could not find documentation on how this specific device generates the private keys. There is a mention about private key generation on their website but it is more of a general article rather than a user’s guide.

In the front page of the Husky Wallet’s website, it states:

A private key stored at the dedicated chip makes bitcoin transaction signing not accessible for software and hardware hackers.

There is no direct specification whether this private key was generated offline or pre-generated right after manufacture and before it is shipped to the user. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, after all “New Wallets” can be created, which leads us the question if the firmware’s source code is available. Sadly there is no mention of source code anywhere.

Without the source code being available, this product is not verifiable.

(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.