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Version: v1

Assurance Levels (AAL)

How safe are the wallets to used? - Current PKC Pilot - relating to the 'Authentication assurance level's (AAL)' according to the World Bank standards:

See short presentation Aqua_PKC_-_Wallet-Security.pdf

Level 1​

The Metamask wallet alone has a low (level 1 ) level of assurance. MetaMask is the most common browser blockchain wallet applications on the web and their developer teams strive for increased security to keep crypto-assets of their 10 Million+ Users safe.

Level 2​

Metamask offers integration with Hardware-Wallets which raises the level of assurance by having at least 2 authentication factors (e.g., a token with a password or PIN) to min. level 2. The Hardware-Tokens are build to be temper proof.

Level 3​

  • It is possible to integrate the different layers of security at once

with Metamask (Password Protection) a hardware-token (temper proof) with PIN a one-time-password generator based on your mobile-phone (recommended is a hardened mobile phone which also uses biometrics for highest security) requires implementation of one-time-password authentication for logins after wallet-authentication see https://github.com/inblockio/micro-PKC/issues/37

  • Other high security options allow multi-signature logins with smart-contracts requiring multiple parties to confirm the operation to be executed. This can be defined based on the smart contract to extreme security as each of the layers mentioned above can be added to each party being involved in the multi-signature event to open a PKC or to SIGN a verified page within the PKC or to witness a data set via a witness network.

  • The mentioned security model is not dependent on the security of Metamask. If Metamask is hacked it will not allow to compromise the model above as the security of the private key of the hardware token is preserved.