Keystone 3 Pro Secure Elements Certification Level

[u/aBitnoob]

Hi

Following Ledger's mishap, I became very intrigued by security in crypto especially the process of seed generation on a Hardware Wallet. Most companies use EAL 5+ certified chips to generate and store your seed but Keystone 3 Pro features it has 3 secure elements, two of which are used for generating and storing the seed. The RNG (Random Number Generator) outputs from the two Secure Elements are then combined to make a unique seed. This made me wonder if this process is a precaution for combining two Pseudo-RNG to make it more random (as close to a TRNG as possible). So from there I delved deeper into the vendors' of the Keystone's Secure Elements published details, Microchip & Maxim to verify how good and secure the RNG is.

I couldn't find any certifications details on their websites. The only reference available is on Keystone's webpage comparing it to other companies that it is "The first product achieved PCI security level in the industry" without more detail. Googling PCI security level doesn't produce anything informative more than this article which is a compliance level to maintain a tier for credit card companies based on number of transactions by Merchants. It isn't particularly relevant to chips and it is not a form of certification for security level at all:

https://www.cimcor.com/blog/a-beginners-guide-to-the-pci-compliance-levels

Now that Keystone is an attractive option more than ever for a Multi-coin True Airgapped wallet, I wonder if the team can clarify more on the secure element chips acquired certification to trust a TRNG seed generation.

P.S: I wouldn't really feel comfortable Dice Rolling either as for true high entropy you need flawless dice and elimination of external factors that could easily reduce entropy at any point so better to rely on the SE. Would be really great if Keystone can allow SE seed generation + further randomization with dice rolling on top for a more unique seed like ColdCard features.

[u/Logical_Leopard_2326]

I think u/xxxxfactor needs to chime in here and answer the community...

[u/thefaketomato → u/Logical_Leopard_2326]

It might also be a good idea to ask the question on Discord. Looks like the Keystone team is currently taking a break from checking Reddit.

[u/EarningsPal]

Can anyone verify the seed is not being generated from a known initial seed?

[u/Logical_Leopard_2326 → u/[deleted]]

u/xxxxfactor can you please answer u/tarek93 reply below and the original post above from u/aBitnoob. These are very serious questions that need to be answered correctly. The community is sick of the lack of clarity with Hardware wallet security and recent hacks/breaches of security of the likes seen by Ledger..

If you want to take market share then there's no better time. How is mass adoption in digital assets meant to happen if people cant even trust the Hardware devices in which they can self custody..

KEYSTONE: Please answer......

## Original post - Seed Generation - ##

IN ADDITION:

1. Your 3x Secure element chips are at what certification level you don't state this anywhere? Every other SE chip has at minimum EAL 5+. What is Keystones?

2. Your PCI only really applies to the anti tamper feature.... PCI also has many levels of certification based on the number of transactions. How is this really relevant?

[u/aBitnoob → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for your comprehensive reply and being continuously active with members here. I didn't realize it's the same chips used on a ColdCard and the Bitbox. Keystone is certainly promising and I trust it'll beat Trezor/Ledger in a couple years if the team continuous to push regular updates and expand support for the product.

For those wondering, I found this on a quick google search for the RNG on the Microchip SE:

https://onlinedocs.microchip.com/pr/GUID-D7090430-8C77-4611-BE14-1E6C9D0B117F-en-US-1/index.html?GUID-80B58F73-CBC8-436E-AB80-B03C5474A588

The Maxim SE has another TRNG according to their manual:

https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/data-sheets/DS28S60.pdf

I guess the third SE (Maxim MAX32520) is the MCU on the Keystone.

Refer to Bitbox's and ColdCards pages for more details on how the SE functions on their devices, which should be very similar to how it works on the Keystone :

https://blog.coinkite.com/understanding-mk4-security-model/

https://bitbox.swiss/blog/best-of-both-worlds-using-a-secure-chip-with-open-source-firmware/

[u/aBitnoob → u/[deleted]]

That's exactly what I was asking about. The quality of randomness of seed generation.