Trillion Dollar Security (1TS) for Ethereum

Transcript

We're good to go. Okay. Well, hi. Welcome everyone on the last day of ECC. So, appreciate your your energy and making it making out here for a Yeah, what's going to be a presentation and a workshop. Um Raise of hands, who has a laptop with them in the room? Okay, that'll work out. That'll work out. Uh so, we'll find out later. Uh one other thing I want to mention before getting into a presentation, there's someone someone trying to listen in remotely.

Um So, yeah, just just keep keep that in mind if you're concerned about recordings and things like that. Okay, so I'll take it away. My name is Hester Bruikman. I am a project manager at Ethereum Foundation. Uh specifically, I work on trillion-dollar security for Ethereum and I'll go into what that means and what we work on in more detail for about 10 minutes and then I really really want to get to work. And for the second part of the workshop, you can consider me almost a proxy of Wallet Beat for those who are familiar with Wallet Beat because that's what we'll we'll get into next. But first, trillion-dollar security. Um what are we

trying to achieve? So, Ethereum's already the most battle-tested blockchain out there, right? So, you would think we've we've learned from our mistakes and so we're pretty far along towards the trillion dollar. We're pretty far along on security, but there's two things we really want to achieve, which is for billions of users to feel comfortable transacting with a thousand dollars relative to their local currency on chain as well as for institutions to feel comfortable with transacting trillions, holding trillions in in a single contract or application. Um that's our goal. It might shift over time as security is an an ongoing

effort right? >> [snorts] >> Why do we need trillion-dollar security? Like why do we need to focus on it as much? I mean, obviously we have tracks like the security track at ECC, but just to get into some numbers, if you look at the 30-day active account addresses, so take today, take yesterday, take the day before, the 30 days prior to that, how many people actually used Ethereum? That's 11.9 million right now. There's 38 million ETH staked. So, that translates to 110 to 120 billion and grows year over year.

There's a stablecoin settlement value of last I checked 720 billion in stablecoins being transacted and 52 billion in DVI in DeFi TVL, which is funds at risk at any smart contract and at smart contracts at any given moment. So, on the way to trillion dollars, that all looks very promising. Then why do we need an effort like trillion-dollar security? Over the past years, there have also been around 430 security incidents. This is not counting all the individual drainer events. This is the the aggregate of incidents that have been

evaluated. That's not insignificant just to this year alone and I'm sure there is a few that happened last week that might not be included here. We've already had 16 incidents. It translates to 7 billion loss in US dollars on Ethereum alone. So again, that doesn't even count for L2s right now. So, yes, there's a lot of value being transacted. At the same time, we're also bleeding value. And that's a motivator for an effort like trillion-dollar security.

Yeah, and maybe just one one more number. Um 93 over 93 million lost to date just this year and we're end of March. And one more thing to note about that, um cuz it does feel like we're in a little bit of a bear market, which might mean that we're not as on top of security, on top of governance security, supply chain management as maybe we should be. That is when most attacks start start to occur. There's an increase if you look at the influx of users, adoption of users, you can you can tie that to incident volume. The watershed moments, like type of severity events, they happen when

things are are calm or essentially anytime. So, just because it's quiet now doesn't mean things don't happen. So, trillion-dollar security, then how do we address this? What do we do? We we measure the current security state. My colleagues have spent a lot of time interviewing over 500 individuals, security professionals to understand what what risks they see today. There was a trillion-dollar security day in Buenos Aires back in November where a bunch of people got together to also understand given these risks, what can we do? What are efforts that we

should be working on? So, we we measure and map the current security state, the gaps that are currently active. We then drive efforts that we see are necessary and driving means we might coordinate actively with a group on a solution. We might fund projects that are working on solutions that we have identified. And then communicate, you can check out trillion-dollar security.org if you want to understand the risks others have already come up with to inform your road map, to inform the solutions you might want to build or contribute to.

In interest of time, I'll be short on this, but take a look. The the people involved are a combination of Ethereum Foundation as well as ecosystem stewards. So, some of the most respected fields people in security, Maddie, Somi Sun, Zach also supporting trillion-dollar security. Okay, getting into some of the some of the risks and mitigations identified. Just to give you a snapshot of what that looks like. Um These bars represent mitigations for risks that are identified.

In some cases, we see mitigations being live, so there's a solution that solves a problem. It's reasonably well adopted. In some cases, it's ongoing. We have a solution, but it's either not adopted, not fully developed. And in some cases, there might be some planned work if you think about post-quantum cryptography right now. A lot of that might fall under like there's planned work or there's work in research. Um the other thing noticeable here is the more let's say in in the bucket of user experience, we've identified more risks and more solutions. So, there's more actionable work work there.

And so, some of our focus has gone to user experience for now. That'll shift over time. This is just also a way for us to help prioritize our work. Zooming into this and this is a little bit of a bridge to the workshop part of things here. Within the bucket of user experience, we do have a number of efforts not mentioned here, verifiable front ends, transaction assertions are other efforts that fall under that bucket, but there's two that we prioritize right now. One being clear signing.

If you if you haven't heard about it, I see Laurent you're here. Yeah, go talk to Laurent maybe after after the workshop, come talk to me. It's the effort to make sure Manuel here as well. It's an effort by a very wide working group to make sure there's transaction clarity given that currently, especially when you open a hardware device, you're still signing hex data and you really don't yeah, can't tell what you're doing. So, that's that's one effort. The other effort which I want to talk more about is wallet safety standards.

So, imagine that we do have a clear signing solution. We also want to drive that that becomes the default for wallets to adopt. And the way we do that, if you if you remember or actively look at L2 Beat, I was just talking to someone earlier about DeFi Scan, those are initiatives to set standards, baseline security of what we should expect from different types of applications in the stack. Wallet safety standards, consider me a proxy for Polymutex here, who is trying to join remotely. So, I hope hope that works out.

Again, yeah, consider me a bit of a proxy. Wallet Beat is the group working on and this is a group of a lot of volunteer contributors working on setting these wallet safety standards. I want to make sure together with EF that they have a framework to be informed about what the community considers safety standards that should be non-negotiable. So, if you think of maybe a baseline wallet, what should it include in terms of privacy or security features? If you think of like the the most ultimate secure wallet, what should be the features that should be included in that uh that stage or that maturity level.

Um So, that about Wallet Beat, um there's one thing I want to highlight about how they work because I think it's very important. We often look at wallets and we count their features, uh which is easy. We look at a like a bit of a spec sheet and we we try and understand, okay, what kind of like key management pattern do they use? Do they offer um multi-party computation wallets or not? Uh and we we kind of treat it as a checkbox. What Wallet Beat does differently is they evaluate the features by the user goal. So, what is it actually delivering for the user? Um that makes it such that wallets can contribute their data uh for if you're working on a wallet, uh submitting uh your wallet uh to Wallet Beat, you're

basically just sharing uh the features that you're working on. Wallet Beat handles the evaluation of it uh to to then identify, is it is it um meeting the the safety standards? So, that just as an illustration means sometimes uh we can look at is the wallet supporting light clients? Um could be a direct uh translation to is there uh an integrity check on the data uh you're getting from uh L1 uh or another chain? Uh but also looking at the license of the wallet, uh the wallet can provide that. Can be multiple things. It can you can read from that, is it a fast uh wallet? You can also check, is it

uh source source available? Um so, there is there's that distinction between features and attributes and given that we're we're going to get into a workshop, uh I want to emphasize that we're thinking about the the attributes here, the is it meeting a user goal to stay safe? You can have your opinion about this. This is a a way to form a maturity model to provide uh definitions for stages. Um this is what we can use in the workshop for now where we say there might be a stage zero for wallets. Uh most wallets, if you don't provide any data, you might be on Wallet Beat, but you're considered

a stage zero because uh there's just not a lot to evaluate. We can say that is uh the case when very few safety uh mitigations have actually been or safety features have been implemented. Uh there might be a step up from that um where some important features uh are covered. At the same time, users are still at risk of very very preventable loss. Things we already know that could be easily prevented. Um we call that a stage 0.5 wallet, um not meeting the the default the baseline safety standards, but on its way there.

Uh and then stage one uh covering safety features that would actually keep users safe in most of the cases. So, most users most of the time would not be vulnerable to like the very common vulnerabilities that we are aware of. Stage two, going one step beyond that, uh very comprehensive safety feature set. Uh users are protected across a wide range of use cases. So, think of the uh the users that need an incredibly secure hardware wallet uh or need to uh like are are more vulnerable to DNS hijacking or uh whatever they're using, they have more specific um requirements and stage

two would be a wallet that also delivers for them. We don't have coffee here. So, I hope [laughter] there's some some energy left to uh get into a workshop. Uh I asked at the start um who had a laptop with them. Uh I would want to ask if you're okay uh to form a group with others who don't have a laptop with them. The easiest way we can go about a workshop is working in FigJam. That makes sure that Wallet Beat as a team can also join, see where uh some some attributes are classified. Um is this a feature or an attribute that

needs to live in a stage two wallet uh or is this a non-negotiable? Like all wallets at a level one should really have this feature. Uh and that's what we'd love to get your input on uh so that whatever safety standards we come up with for wallets, it's not EF saying, this is what a wallet needs. It's not Bye. >> [laughter] >> Sorry. It's not EF saying, this is what a wallet needs. It's not uh Wallet Beat saying, this is what a wallet needs, but it's uh shared by a wide group of people such as yourselves uh having thought through what what do you expect from a wallet to stay safe?

Um Going briefly into uh what I what I'd ask once we open a FigJam, um there's a bunch of stickies in that FigJam, um basically calling out attributes, things a wallet can have. Drag them into a stage uh zero, stage 0.5, stage one, stage two. So, it's literally just dragging post-its, nothing more than that. Uh if you see something uh not represented, there's no card for something that maybe you work on, you know is important, add it.

Uh and then at the end, and I'll give a a little heads-up maybe 10 minutes before uh the end of the workshop, um select a non-negotiable. So, mark something that is in a level one of which you'd say that like really wallet should not launch without this. This is a critical feature. Um so, that is what I'd ask from you. Let me just open uh ba ba ba. Open a FigJam so you can see what it looks like. Might be a little bit less scary. Okay, to to to just to give you uh an impression again. Stickies, drag them

into another field. Uh that's all there is to it. Uh read the sticky, drag them into another field. Uh I think it's easiest to do this in a group. So, maybe you can like show of hands who has a laptop that they're willing to gather around. Okay. Could you could you own like a group one and maybe four to five people join? What's your name? I'm Ivan. Ivan, yeah? Okay. So, Ivan can take four to five people. Who else is here with a laptop? Do you have a No.

Laurent, are you sha- sharing your laptop? Is that what's happening? Okay. Okay. So, you can take four or five people. Hello. Uh Jakub, are you doing a laptop share? I don't know how long I can stay, but I can do it meanwhile. >> To start, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um where are we? Okay, you can you can also see um Polimeer Tex here leav- leaving a message. He's around. Um you might see some comments arrive as

you're dragging things into stages because he he might be curious um what the reasoning is. All right. Ooh, good question. I don't know. If you have a laptop and you can see

FigJam, by all means, start dragging. Do you want us to copy the sticky notes or just move the ones that are there? Okay. Thank you, Esther. I'm in the jam.

Nice to meet you. Yes. >> Oh, okay.

Because with the these cameras that's the with the I'm familiar with the the wall switch. If it hits this condition Oh, yeah, this camera.

And this Yeah. Oh, so the Okay. Like one of these things was open source. It seemed like it was similar to the pink one. Right? One of those always projects. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The first one right, the one that What?

currently small that Yeah.

there. Well, maybe this Yeah. Yeah.

>> [clears throat] [clears throat]

>> I have never even thought about that. Yeah. still That sounds kind of advanced to me. From like what? A little bit of that. Like like uh encrypting the seed phrase Uh

But um Cuz like a lot of wallets now do like uh storing iCloud Yeah. and they also encrypt it. That I think is pretty good. Like uh best is But What? I think it's one. Because I know >> Um, quick intermezzo. If the mic's still

working. Uh, we have about 10 minutes. I want to ask to start thinking about what is a non-negotiable for level one. Um, so if you've put post-its in a level one or or stage one section, which one uh would you mark as non-negotiable? And I think there's a there's a way in FigJam to add a stamp to it. Doesn't really matter how you do it, like add a star, add a heart, add a stamp. Doesn't matter, but but make it recognizable which one is absolutely non-negotiable, what it must have in. I would say for the level one, yeah, so for 0.5, yes, that rolls into Yeah, exactly. Yeah, sorry. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Can I Can I ask you all to come back to uh I don't know, maybe maybe focus here. I'll move back into the live stream view. Um, I asked you a couple minutes ago to start thinking about what's a absolute non-negotiable for level one. Maybe raise your hands by group. Uh, have you decided on something that you consider absolutely must have? Yeah?

Okay. Cuz we Yeah, we have a few minutes. I kind of want to go around Yeah, I see a microphone there. Yacob, for your group or someone else in the group, can you explain what you considered non-negotiable and why? Test test. Yes. Yeah, so there are lots of scammers in the ecosystem, unfortunately. So, having a database of known scam websites and smart contracts and warning users, oh, you're about to interact with known bad player, that's probably really important to have in stage one or even lower.

Verify the front end that you're actually using the app you think you're using. Okay. Okay, awesome. In the back, you also had a non-negotiable? A non-negotiable. >> Oh, you have Oh, okay, all of them are I think there might be more groups like that. Yeah. Well, I mean, we were mostly focused on like the implementation side, so you can't be storing secure material that's unencrypted. You can't be like allowing um insecure RNG generation or like using just random um cryptographic libraries instead of using standardized ones. Um that's the general gist of most of ours.

That's good. Start with the keys. Yeah. Yeah. Make sense. Make sense. Uh da da da The group there? Yeah. Probably it's signing. Looking at what we are signing in a human readable way. This is pretty much important and we currently almost don't have it anywhere. You're making me do a little cheer inside. I'm not sure it's moderate, but yes, I agree. Totally agree. Uh Yes.

We put the bills must be signed and reproducible because even if you have all the other features, uh if the user can't verify that the software they're using actually implements all that and it's not just one that was published by an attacker, then they're pretty much all void anyways. And you're talking about the the built the application you're using as your wallet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We actually made a distinction We actually separated out cards for signing builds versus reproducible builds because in practice, reproducible builds can be extraordinarily hard to do. Like incredible amounts of work to do. Um so, we so put that into stage two. Um just

because it's it can be almost impractical for uh certain platforms and code stuff. And it needs to be manageable for wallets, but yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, reproducible builds. Uh and it sounds like a dis bit of a distinction of publishing a bill of materials. Um Okay. You need to explain me a little bit more where the work is, like what makes it so complex, but okay. Um Laura, can you can you speak for your extensive group here? Let's speak for the group coming from a hardware wallet without surprise, uh the key management and the way you manage your cryptographic keys is a the key concern for us. So, non-negotiable is actually properly handling the

use and storage of your cryptographic keys. So, we put a lot of stuff of that at stage zero that comes out with security audits around the typically that that key piece of the of the code actually. And personally, I would like clear signing, but I didn't have the time to find it in the in the list, sorry. Yeah, there's many attributes to check for. Okay, awesome. I want to thank you all so much again for Thursday, last day of the event, coming here and actually doing a workshop and participating. Appreciate it. Um and thank you so much.