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SeedSigner

Latest release: 0.4.5 ( 21st November 2021 ) 🔍 Last analysed 26th March 2022 . Not reproducible from source provided
20th December 2020

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Help spread awareness for build reproducibility

Please help us spread the word, asking SeedSigner to support reproducible builds  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 

The Seed Signer is a truly Open Source project that lowers the barrier for entry for airgapped multi-signature cryptocurrency hardware wallets. The code is publicly available as are the instructions for assembly.

It claims to solve the following problems:

  • Creates a secure, air-gapped environment for private key generation
  • Enforces strict separation between private key storage and protocol software / internet
  • Lowers the barrier cost of multi-sig security (from several hundred to < $50)

Can the private keys be created offline?

Yes. The seed signer is airgapped.

Are the private keys shared?

No. The companion apps only get signed transactions and no keys.

Does the device display the receive address for confirmation?

Yes.

Does the interface have a display screen and buttons which allows the user to confirm transaction details?

Yes.

Is it reproducible?

SeedSigner does share binaries, so the question is if these binaries match the published and hopefully reviewed source code.

On their website there is a button labeled “DOWNLOAD VERSION 0.4.6” which does not statically link to a binary but to a JavaScript document that then initiates a download. While this is slightly suspicious, all that really matters is the hash of the downloaded file. If you and I get the same hash, we are talking about the same file.

Alternatively there is the GitHub Releases where as of now “0.4.6” is the “latest” release. Both downloads had the same sha256 hash 1e47d997484c0396d01c87664753644e91c8e7c99f64b4cbfb048cf79bb03b1a.

So … how was this file created, so we can recreate it? There is not exactly “Build Instructions”. There is only a document with Manual Installation Instructions. And that is pretty involved. Its starting point is … you need an RPi. Not necessarily an RPi Zero 1.3 and the “Raspberry Pi Lite operating system, dated 2021-05-28”. Being specific is important for reproducibility but the next steps … are many and none of which to our knowledge is meant to make reproducible modifications to the system. While many packages that are to be installed are pinned to specific versions, this instruction:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y wiringpi python3-pip \
  python3-numpy python-pil libopenjp2-7 git python3-opencv \
  python3-picamera libatlas-base-dev qrencode

explicitly instructs to update to whatever the latest packages are on the remote server and install the given ten packages.

We might miss something here and might give it an actual try at some point but for now we go with our educated guess that this product is not verifiable.

If you want to use this product, do not trust the binary download. Go with the “Manual Installation Instructions” instead!

We had a little back-and-forth with the provider on Twitter.

(dg, lw)

Verdict Explained

We could not verify that the provided code matches the binary!

As part of our Methodology, we ask:

Unreproducible!

Is the published binary matching the published source code?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Not reproducible from source provided".

Published code doesn’t help much if it is not what the published binary was built from. That is why we try to reproduce the binary. We

  1. obtain the binary from the provider
  2. compile the published source code using the published build instructions into a binary
  3. compare the two binaries
  4. we might spend some time working around issues that are easy to work around

If this fails, we might search if other revisions match or if we can deduct the source of the mismatch but generally consider it on the provider to provide the correct source code and build instructions to reproduce the build, so we usually open a ticket in their code repository.

In any case, the result is a discrepancy between the binary we can create and the binary we can find for download and any discrepancy might leak your backup to the server on purpose or by accident.

As we cannot verify that the source provided is the source the binary was compiled from, this category is only slightly better than closed source but for now we have hope projects come around and fix verifiability issues.

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.