Bitfi – a cryptocurrency wallet supported by anti-virus software entrepreneur John McAfee, has recently said in a report that it no longer calls the service provided by it as “unhackable”.
Followed by the release of evidence by a group of security researchers about the wallet being compromised, the company came with the announcement.
However, McAfee officials maintain that the claims are as it is and the wallet cannot be hacked.
Bitfi earlier had put a reward offer of USD 250,000 reward for anyone who hacked the wallet successfully.
But it also stated that the Bitcoin inside needs to be removed from the wallet as it earlier too there were claims of it being controversial among the cybersecurity community due to the fact that weaknesses are identified but are not acted upon them.
Earlier, the group of researchers claimed to have hacked the wallet successfully for once but both Bitfi and McAfee refused to accept the claim on the grounds that their evidence was not acceptable.
According to both the companies, the ‘hack’ did not qualify for the reward as per the rules as not a single digital currency was actually removed.
According to security researchers, the argument from their side was that the terms of the reward being cited were too specific.
“Effective immediately, we are closing the current bug bounty programs which have caused understandable anger and frustration among researchers,” the firm wrote in a statement.
The firm said that it has plans up to announce something big in the coming days.
However, John McAfee told on Twitter in response to a question posed by a follower that the USD 120 wallet is designed to hold any form of cryptocurrency and is “clearly unhackable”.
Among the group of security researchers who were involved in the hacking operation was Prof Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity expert at Surrey University.
“Security can be complex and the wider public rely upon vendors telling the truth,” he said.
“However, there are certain signals that should immediately ring alarm bells. The worst is if a vendor claims something is unhackable as Bitfi did: nothing is unhackable.”
The functionality of the wallet works by creating a virtual key based on two pieces of information – a self-made-up phrase – on the website it suggests something like “Whats the best ten places you love to live in?” and the second piece of information is to give phone number or email address to make it is sure that combination of both the two of the private keys is unique in itself.
According to Bitfi, this key is not stored on any device including on the device itself, and this was issue that security researchers disputed with the company who claimed that they were able to find the key by using a method called “a cold boot attack”, through which electronic information can be easily recovered from memory long after it has been entered.
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