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Prismicide

🔍 Last analysed 4th April 2022 .    
24th March 2014
1st November 2015

As part of our Methodology, we ask:

Is the source code publicly available?

 
If the answer is "no", we mark it as "No source for current release found".

A wallet that claims to not give the provider the means to steal the users’ funds might actually be lying. In the spirit of “Don’t trust - verify!” you don’t want to take the provider at his word, but trust that people hunting for fame and bug bounties could actually find flaws and back-doors in the wallet so the provider doesn’t dare to put these in.

Back-doors and flaws are frequently found in closed source products but some remain hidden for years. And even in open source security software there might be catastrophic flaws undiscovered for years.

An evil wallet provider would certainly prefer not to publish the code, as hiding it makes audits orders of magnitude harder.

For your security, you thus want the code to be available for review.

If the wallet provider doesn’t share up to date code, our analysis stops there as the wallet could steal your funds at any time, and there is no protection except the provider’s word.

“Up to date” strictly means that any instance of the product being updated without the source code being updated counts as closed source. This puts the burden on the provider to always first release the source code before releasing the product’s update. This paragraph is a clarification to our rules following a little poll.

We are not concerned about the license as long as it allows us to perform our analysis. For a security audit, it is not necessary that the provider allows others to use their code for a competing wallet. You should still prefer actual open source licenses as a competing wallet won’t use the code without giving it careful scrutiny.

The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.

But we also ask:

Is the product still supported by the still existing provider?

 
If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Not functioning anymore".

Discontinued products or worse, products of providers that are not active anymore, are problematic, especially if they were not formerly reproducible and well audited to be self-custodial following open standards. If the provider hasn’t answered inquiries for a year but their server is still running or similar circumstances might get this verdict, too.

Help spread awareness for build reproducibility

Please help us spread the word discussing transparency with Prismicide  via their Twitter!

Do your own research!

Try out searching for "lost bitcoins", "stole my money" or "scammers" together with the wallet's name, even if you think the wallet is generally trustworthy. For all the bigger wallets you will find accusations. Make sure you understand why they were made and if you are comfortable with the provider's reaction.

If you find something we should include, you can create an issue or edit this analysis yourself and create a merge request for your changes.

The Analysis 

Product Description

The product tried to raise funds via indiegogo.com in 2014 which did not meet its funding goals. It then rebranded to Bitcoinpinpad.com, and the device was slightly altered but this too was discontinued. As PRISMicide, it was described as:

PRISMicide is an open security platform based on smart card (www.origamiboard.com) and by far the most secure Bitcoin Hardware Wallet

It is comprised of two components: an Open Source smart card and an “open hardware” portable player or reader. The smart card protects the private keys. The portable player can interface with Android and iOS devices, or with Windows, Mac or Linux systems via USB. In order to sign transactions, the user must key in a pin code to allow the portable player to display transaction details through its display. The card utilizes an HD BIP32-compliant seed. The user can back up the seed phrases and regenerate the private keys should the need arise. The reader displays this on the screen.

It also has multisig support:

P2SH addresses can be generated on the PRISMicide terminal by inserting several cards and choose the required cooperation “2 of 2”, “2 of 3” and “3 of 3”. Then you can unlock funds sent to this address by inserting the right number of cards depending on the chosen escrow model to sign the transaction.

Verdict

The defunct project claims to be Open Source, however since most of the possible sources for information about their code are also gone, we believe that the project’s code is no longer publicly available. We asked on twitter to verify for documentation purposes.

(dg)