In January last year, Kraken labs identified a security flaw in a certain popular hardware wallet brand. The study indicates that the coins inside the hardware wallet can be accessed by extracting the seeds (mnemonics). Kraken labs did this by using a device they handmade for a couple of hundred dollars and needed just 15 minutes to extract the seeds with it. They also stated that this device could be mass-produced and sold to the public for around $75. They finished off the study by saying that users of this hardware wallet should not allow anyone to physically have their wallet or else they will risk getting their crypto stolen.
The passphrase is the easiest and most secure solution out there.
If you have been using hardware wallets like the ELLIPAL, Ledger, or Trezor, you will know that these wallets allow you to set a passphrase. A passphrase is the one extra word in your mnemonics. If the ELLIPAL provides you with 12 words mnemonics to backup your account with, the passphrase is the 13th word you need to enter to complete the backing up. Even if you got all the 12 words correct, if the passphrase is wrong, you will not be able to completely gain access to the wallet.
What is special about the passphrase is that it is a word that you can come up with yourself. The passphrase is not generated by the system so even with the seed extracting method mentioned above, it will not be able the get the passphrase. Unless the hacker can guess what is your passphrase, they will not be able to gain access to your crypto, no matter how skilled the hacker is. An important tip: Don't set your passphrase to be something easy to guess like your last name or your birthday, try something that only you will know!
Easy yet deadly!
What we meant by dealy is that the passphrase is deadly to hackers! There is no way to successfully extract seeds and steal crypto when a passphrase is active. On the ELLIPAL wallet, you will be advised to create a passphrase when you are creating a new account.
The extra physical protection
If you are using an ELLIPAL Titan hardware wallet then we have good news for you. ELLIPAL got an extra feature for you to protect your cryptocurrency and your seeds from being extracted. The ELLIPAL Titan has an anti-tamper feature to make sure that when physical attacks are not possible. If a hacker tries to access the circuit boards inside the ELLIPAL Titan, the ELLIPAL Titan will self-destruct. What this means is that all the data inside the wallet will be wiped and the wallet will not be usable anymore.