The Temple Wallet web extension and mobile apps developed by Madfish Solutions are part of the Tezos blockchain ecosystem. Cryptocurrency wallets require advanced security measures and security guarantees similar to modern financial or banking apps. As a non-custodial wallet, Temple Wallet puts a strong emphasis on data protection on the client side: storing private keys and mnemonic phrases and signing transactions on behalf of a user.
The Tezos Foundation requested Cossack Labs to conduct a security audit of the Temple Wallet mobile applications and the web extension from Cossack Labs. Cossack Labs performed the audit, outlined issues and suggested improvements to security and cryptography aspects of wallets’ source code and cryptographic design. See below.
Secure storage of an account's private keys is crucial for non-custodial cryptocurrency wallets because their leakage equals losing the funds. Building intuitive security-focused design and transparent apps' business logic should prevent users from accidentally exposing private keys or signing fraudulent transactions.
Account synchronisation means that users can easily open their account from the mobile app to the web app, and back. The sync process occurs by transferring the account's seed—encrypting the data in one wallet and decrypting it in another one. Thus, each supported platform should use the same crypto primitives. Cryptographic libraries available natively (on iOS, Android, and the Web) are frequently out of sync, forcing to use a third-party crypto primitives source.
Crypto wallets often use in-app passwords to derive a cryptographic key for encrypting wallet’s private data. Thus, they make users fully responsible for passwords security. This approach should be implemented with caution, using a reliable password-based key derivation function and informing users that losing their passwords may result in the inability to restore their data.
Apps are third-party apps that communicate with the wallet and allow users to perform more actions with their funds and NFTs. Communication with DApps should be protected: authenticated, validated, and sanitised to avoid issuing unintended transactions.
Modern software development brings the common practice of heavily relying on many external dependencies, including cryptographic and security libraries. It raises the question of selecting reliable and secure third-party libraries (especially for the React Native ecosystem) and regularly updating them as a part of Secure SDLC.
Each platform has its own approach to storing sensitive data securely, which requires a thorough understanding of each platform’s internals. For example, iOS provides Keychain to store any sensitive data; however there's no similar secure storage for Android or web extension, so developers must implement data at rest encryption on their own.
Web extensions operate in a risky environment. Their security relies on the browser's and the user's machine's security. Wallets can be targeted through a browser via installed malicious extensions or browser exploits that provide access to the extension memory sandbox. So, proper application security and data protection measures should mitigate these risks.
The Tezos Foundation and Madfish Solutions received an in-depth security review of Temple Wallet apps, including not only a list of found security issues—but also suggestions for improving application logic from a security perspective.
The security, general stability, and maintainability of the Temple Wallet ecosystem were improved. Applications were enriched with numerous updates in security, cryptography usage and design, platform-specific controls, defenses against reverse engineering and tampering, and other enhancements.
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