The most in-depth anti-phishing guide to the Bitcoin ecosystem on the web

Original Author: OneKey Chinese (X:@OneKeyCN)

Editor’s note: The upgrade of Taproot and Segwit has introduced new features to the BTC network, and also indirectly expanded the block data, contributing to the explosion of the BTC ecosystem from 2023 to the present. However, the introduction of new assets and features comes with new security challenges. How to maximize asset security in the BTC ecosystem with limited security infrastructure?OneKey Chinese has prepared an anti-phishing guide for Bitcoin ecological players, organized by Odaily Planet Daily as follows:

At the end of 2021, the Taproot upgrade went into effect at blocks 709, 632. At that time, people were immersed in the Ethereum NFT boom, and no one knew that this would be the most “wealth-making” upgrade of BTC.

Together with the Segwit upgrade, Taproot has introduced new features to the BTC network, and has also indirectly scaled block data (equivalent to 1 MB to 4 MB), which has become the fuse for the explosion of the BTC ecosystem from 2023 to the present. The emergence of new assets such as Taproot Assets, Ordinals BRC-20, ARC-20, Runes, etc., has also kept Taproot’s transfer adoption rate at half or even above.

However, with the introduction of new assets and features comes new security challenges.

The Bitcoin ecosystem has an underlying model that is different from the Ethereum ecosystem. At present, the scene of “a lot of things to be built” and “a high threshold for understanding” in the BTC new asset ecology is believed to make many users feel excited - after all, this often means an opportunity to “get rich”.

However, this will also put forward new requirements for users’ awareness of safe operations, otherwise it is easy to lose coins without explanation. There have even been incidents such as the previous Atomic marketplace that misused signature types and led to hacking.

The following OneKey tells you how to protect assets and prevent phishing in a BTC ecosystem with limited security infrastructure.

A brief analysis of the specific impact of the Taproot upgrade

Before we talk about the specific anti-phishing measures, we need to foreshadow the impact of the Taproot upgrade.

In addition to the previously mentioned indirect promotion of the prosperity of the BTC multi-asset ecosystem, there have actually been great changes at the bottom of the BTC transaction, mainly two: Schnorr signature and MAST technology. And when these two are combined with PSBT (Partially Signed Transactions), there is more room for hackers to play tricks.

One is signed by Schnorr. That’s right, this upgrade swapped out the ECDSA signature in the white paper. The technical feature of this signature is that multiple signatures or public keys are aggregated into one. In the past, multiple signatures were required to be confirmed again and again, but now they only need to be verified once, which directly reduces the footprint of signatures.

One is MAST technology. If the former is an aggregate signature, then MAST is used to “aggregate” multiple scripts (for scripts, you can think of it as a finite “smart contract” for Bitcoin). At the same time, when submitting the verification unlock cost, you only need to verify one of the spending conditions. The footprint of complex scripts for many conditions can be greatly reduced.

These two technologies have the greatest impact on privacy, but they also imply room for security risks.

For transfer records, all UTXO transfers will look the same after the upgrade. In Mempool, the transfer type is displayed as P2TR, and the addresses are all addresses of the same length starting with bc1p.

Previously, you could easily tell the difference between a transfer to a normal address (P2PKH/P2WPKH) and a transfer to a script address (P2SH/P2WSH).

Now until you look at how many people spend a UTXO, you can’t tell the difference between transferring money to a regular address and transferring money to a script address.

For scripts, miner verification only needs to expose one of the cost conditions of the script, and other branch scripts are unknown to the outside world.

5 tips to prevent phishing of new assets in the Bitcoin ecosystem

Obviously, the security infrastructure of the current asset ecology of BTC is far less powerful than that of Ethereum, and there are many things that users need to understand and learn first.

At the same time, the principle of phishing is also different from that of Ethereum, and many phishing attacks may not be well understood by the entire market until they are discovered. For example, the *SIGNHASH_NONE signature security incident in the Atomic marketplace, the Unisat / Xverse wallet is also a security alert that was added later.

(1) The first mental technique: the cliché basic skills of encryption security

That is, pay attention to the offline storage security of the private key, pay attention to whether it is a trusted URL, and pay attention to protect the computer from Trojan viruses, etc.

However, in the FOMO market, there may be users who want to “rush” before a new project has formed a trust consensus, and the next few tricks are particularly important.

(2) The second mental technique: clear input and output

For example, if a hacker wants to fish up all of your Ordinals inscription NFTs at once, the INPUT of the transaction will definitely show that all of your inscription NFTs have been put in. AT THE SAME TIME, THE OUTPUT WILL SHOW THAT THEY HAVE ALL GONE TO AN UNFAMILIAR ADDRESS.

Take, for example, the use of Unisat to place an Ordinals inscription NFT on MagicEden. When you place an order for one or more inscription NFTs on the MagiEden marketplace, a pop-up PSBT signature request will show that the input of the transaction is one or more of your inscriptions, and the output will show how many bitcoins you will receive once the transaction is successful.

(3) The third mental technique: Be careful with the type of signature

You can see the popular science of Bitcoin’s current signature type here (…) ）。

Let’s say it’s a real script address. It depends on whether they expose the full contents of the script address. If the content is incomplete, it is possible to hide one or more malicious UTXO unlock conditions, even if the user can sign the transfer asset normally when using it. It may suddenly “close the net” and transfer all UTXO assets one day in the future.

Fortunately, for the current application, the transaction of various inscription assets does not need to use complex scripts, and the PSBT (Partially Signed Transaction) is used to specify the input and output.

However, in the future BTC L2 operation, there is a high probability that complex multi-condition Bitcoin scripts will be involved. For example, in the Bitcoin staking script of Babylon (@babylon_chain), there is a relatively complex slashing logic and unlocking logic.

If you want to use this native staking method of Bitcoin Script, it is particularly important to open source the script and verify the security and integrity, otherwise users need to have absolute trust in the project party.

(5) The fifth mental technique: pay attention to safety dynamics and pay attention to prevention

Follow the top accounts in the security field to ensure that you can keep up with the latest phishing methods and get warnings as soon as possible. Such as SlowMist’s Cosine @evilcos, Go Plus Security Official @GoPlusSecurity, Scam Sniffer@realScamSniffer, our OneKey Official Account, @OneKeyCN.

When it comes to prevention before it happens, we can transfer security lessons from other places. For example, in Ethereum, there is such a phishing method - that is, constructing addresses with similar heads and tails, causing users to lose assets by mistakenly copying them in the history. And when constructing BTC signature transactions, it is also possible to step on the pit because the output address is not clearly checked.

In mainstream BTC ecological wallets such as Unisat / Xverse, the Taproot address is displayed as bc1px… e9wh0 (example), and bc1p is the fixed beginning of the Taproot address.

This equates to only 6 letters for confirmation. Compared with the standard configuration of Ethereum wallets that have a common address address book function and basically display more than 10 digits, it is obviously not enough.

This means that there is a good chance that hackers will be able to do custom phishing by generating matching addresses (although there are not many on Bitcoin at the moment).

Therefore, if you do something to prevent it from happening, you should check the address as complete as possible.

Anyway…

Study Bitcoin.

Study Bitcoin Security.

As Taproot introduces new assets and new scenarios for Bitcoin, we must also learn new forms of security threats, especially the ever-evolving phishing techniques.

Especially now that the ecological infrastructure is not perfect, even misoperation and coin loss and coin burning occur from time to time, not to mention well-planned fishing.

Last but not least: OneKey always puts security first, keeping up with technology developments and updating and sharing security policies. The BTC ecosystem is one of the protagonists of this bull run, and we will continue to pay attention to the security challenges of the BTC ecosystem and work together to promote and build a safer crypto asset environment.

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