San Francisco based mobile payments startup Square open-sources hardware security modules (HSMs) and wallet auditing tool
US-based digital payments firm Square has announced its plan of making Bitcoin cold storage solution open-source, as mentioned in the blog post by Square security engineer Alok Menghrajani.
The documentation, code, and tools for the company’s “Subzero” Bitcoin cold storage solution are now are now available Github for its users. With the motive to inspire innovation in the cryptocurrency sector and help startup companies with potential and fulfill their security needs, Square come up to this move.
Subzero uses a Hardware Security Module (HSM), designed to run a custom Bitcoin wallet implementation called Subzero Core.
“We hope that by sharing our work, we can make it easier for others to fulfill their security needs, enabling even more innovation — and better protection for all players — in the cryptocurrency space. In the long run, since we had to solve problems that other companies may face, we are interested in standardizing some of our work.”
Additionally, Menghrajani stated that because the underlying HSM is programmable, Square developed a technology that is capable of ending Bitcoin from a hot wallet to the cold storage at any time. The program requires multi-party signatures before bringing the crypto back to the hot wallet.
“The HSM is programmable, allowing us to support bitcoin wallets today while giving us the flexibility to implement other protocols in the future,” he said.
