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Comment by Ixiaus | Hacker News Reader

Cool idea, it reminds of an IronKey but for Bitcoin; I'm frustrated that there isn't any solid or easily findable technical information about the device though!

When I click on "About Trezor" it takes me to...a brief overview? I would expect that link to be a much more thorough explanation of what Trezor is, how it works, and why I should buy it.

Why would Trezor be better than an IronKey? Is it a push button interface for sending bitcoins? Does it just store my wallet or is it running a bitcoin client? I read it works with most bitcoin clients, what does that mean? What are the buttons for?

If it's just storing my wallet what kind of encryption is the device using? Does the device have hardware-based tamper proofing (IronKeys will self-destruct after X number of failed passphrase entries, it will self-destruct if someone tries to physically tamper with it)?

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What I get from the video is that it stores the wallet - a set of public and private keys for your addresses, along with a list of transactions to/from those addresses - and signs transactions.

Bitcoin clients will implement support for reading the list of transactions to/from your addresses to figure out how much money you have. They will also implement support for using the device to sign transactions, so the private keys never touch your computer, and therefore a compromised computer cannot steal bitcoins without the device prompting the user to confirm the transaction.

As the device is a single-purpose computer, likely running the absolute minimum code necessary to implement transaction signing, it should be significantly more secure than your PC just there. And you can easily physically secure it in any way you want, whether that's carrying it around with you at all times or locking it in a safe. Anything over that is a bonus, in my eyes.

I do not currently use Bitcoins, at least partially due to security concerns, but with this, I would be very interested.

The transactions are stored by the bitcoin network, so the device probably only stores the public and private keys for your addresses, nothing else.

Here's a short (30min) talk from Bitcoin 2013 conference http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t18a-wXBnw

And a bitcointalk thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=122438.0

Hopefully they'll add something to the product site itself.

>Why would Trezor be better than an IronKey?

An IronKey is designed to defend against it being lost or stolen. A Trezor is designed to defend against malware. Malware can submit a transaction to the Trezor, but it can't push the button on it.

>Does it just store my wallet or is it running a bitcoin client?

It just stores your wallet. Your Bitcoin client needs to have Trezor support for this to work.

>When I click on "About Trezor" it takes me to...a very brief overview?

Yeah, didn't they say it was open source?

> An IronKey is designed to defend against it being lost or stolen. A Trezor is designed to defend against malware.

Malware can submit a transaction to the Trezor, but it can't push the button on it.

Okay, that's interesting, thanks.

> When I click on "About Trezor" it takes me to...a very brief overview?

Yeah, didn't they say it was open source?

And? As far as I can tell they are a for-profit venture that is simply open-sourcing their product.

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