Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation?
bitcointalk-entropy-warning-design
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The thread gained a reply arguing that a properly implemented TRNG or CSPRNG should signal failure internally rather than relying on user-facing entropy-quality warnings.
Quote from: Zaguru12 on August 04, 2026, 01:52:32 PM
The only reason why I think most people are challenging or blaming cold card is simply because there was reports that their system source (TRNG) wasn�t that random as it was broke but they didn�t take that warning or acted upon it and it was what lead to this, which is why I also call for them to be blamed
If NVK didn't decide to switch to a non open-source license and mess around, the scandal wouldn't have happened. He has been arrogant for years. He was the first to gloat whenever something bad happened to other hardware wallet manufacturers and quickly talk about the strengths of his own product. People didn't like him.
+Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation?
+Post by: Cricktor on August 09, 2026, 08:33:15 PM
+Quote from: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM
+Right now, most wallets software and hardware generate your SEED phrase and hand it to you with zero indication of whether the underlying randomness was actually good. No warning, no way to know.
+In my view, it would be very welcome if wallets performed the relevant self checking on the quality of the entropy used to generate user's wallet, and warned user if the entropy falls below, say, 128 bits. ...
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satscraper opening a discussion of whether wallet software should warn users about low-quality entropy while generating a seed. A distinct prospective design question raised in the COLDCARD incident's aftermath, rather than another owner exposure self-assessment. The proposed warnings and technical claims in the thread are the posters' own, not verified here.
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The thread gained a reply arguing that a properly implemented TRNG or CSPRNG should signal failure internally rather than relying on user-facing entropy-quality warnings.
Recovered from the Internet Archive rather than captured by this project. The row records that third-party provenance separately from captures made by this project.
What changed from the previous capture 13 lines
Quote from: Zaguru12 on August 04, 2026, 01:52:32 PM The only reason why I think most people are challenging or blaming cold card is simply because there was reports that their system source (TRNG) wasn�t that random as it was broke but they didn�t take that warning or acted upon it and it was what lead to this, which is why I also call for them to be blamed If NVK didn't decide to switch to a non open-source license and mess around, the scandal wouldn't have happened. He has been arrogant for years. He was the first to gloat whenever something bad happened to other hardware wallet manufacturers and quickly talk about the strengths of his own product. People didn't like him. +Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? +Post by: Cricktor on August 09, 2026, 08:33:15 PM +Quote from: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM +Right now, most wallets software and hardware generate your SEED phrase and hand it to you with zero indication of whether the underlying randomness was actually good. No warning, no way to know. +In my view, it would be very welcome if wallets performed the relevant self checking on the quality of the entropy used to generate user's wallet, and warned user if the entropy falls below, say, 128 bits. ... +This should actually not be necessary. If a software wallet generates entropy, it has to use at least something like a CSPRNG or a HWRNG, if available, usually via some library or OS routines. I would expect that if you call such a RNG, it should return some error codes if there are any issues, like low-entropy pool or whatever. +Same applies to a hardware wallet which commonly has at least one TRNG (for me synonym to a HWRNGhardware random number generator). I'm pretty sure that TRNGs are implemented in a way that they can indicate to the caller if something is wrong with their entropy (called too often, entropy depletion, circuit instability and whatnot else). Good and reliable TRNGs are known technology with various well working circuit designs that I would call "understood". I'm no expert in this field but at some past I was quite interested in this topic and read a lot about current RNG technology. +The problem that has been addressed partly already is: how do you quantify "good entropy"? From my knowledge about RNGs, I'd say, you can't from a single or only few samples. All randomness tests I've see and tried with some special test software commonly require a lot of samples to churn them through a plethora of randomness tests. That's hardly feasible for what you have in mind. +A hardware wallet would need to do this all internally because the entropy should never leave the device, only been converted once to mnemonic recovery words for the human to back it up. Frankly, this would bloat the firmware with stuff that in my opinion shouldn't be necessary. +A proper system design has to use a TRNG (or CSPRNG) that behaves non-erratic and does its job. Period! It should signal issues and if those are signaled the entropy generation for a crypto wallet has to abort and NEVER divert to a flawed low-entropy shit-RNG under any circumstances. N.E.V.E.R! +It is of utmost stupidity and arrogance that Coinkite chose to leave such a code path in their firmware AND that apparently they never debugged it properly AND/OR left it in for whatever malicious purpose. (Don't really want to follow the evil conspiracy path here.) +I don't even understand why they had a terribly weak PRNG as accessible code path in their firmware anyway. No deal for debug builds or for whatever it was there, but for the production firmware for customers? C'mon, no freaking way should this be there. +If you can't or don't want to trust such RNGs, generate the entropy for your wallet(s) yourself, but do it the right way, knowing and understanding what you're doing, because it's easy to screw up and you can't really know or detect bad entropy easily. Powered by SMF 1.1.19 | SMF © 2006-2009, Simple MachinesExtracted text as captured
Bitcoin Forum Bitcoin => Wallet software => Topic started by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM Title: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM Been thinking about this after the Coldcard drama. Right now, most wallets software and hardware generate your SEED phrase and hand it to you with zero indication of whether the underlying randomness was actually good. No warning, no way to know. In my view, it would be very welcome if wallets performed the relevant self checking on the quality of the entropy used to generate user's wallet, and warned user if the entropy falls below, say, 128 bits. Either way, something as simple as: "Entropy below recommended minimum, proceed anyway? Yes/No" would at least surface the problem instead of silently handing someone SEED phrase that could potentially be compromised. It's probably the right time to raise this matter with hardware wallet makers and software developers. Curious what people think about this. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: Charles-Tim on August 04, 2026, 11:58:03 AM Example, how would Coldcard warn when its developers do not even know about it? Or maybe the developers know about it and are behind what happened. Use open source wallet. Make use of passphrase that has strong characters or use a multisig wallet. Adding your own protection (like passphrase or multisig) to it makes your wallet secure. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 12:16:39 PM Quote from: Charles-Tim on August 04, 2026, 11:58:03 AM How would Coldcard warn that when its developers do not even know about it? Or maybe the developers know and are behind what happened. ColdCard and other wallet developers could implement self-testing feature based on NIST SP 800-90B standard. Quote from: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-90B.pdf 4.2 Types of Health Tests Start-up tests: run after power-up/reboot, before first use. "The specific conditions in which the startup tests must be run for FIPS-validated cryptographic modules are determined by the requirements of FIPS 140." Continuous tests: "run indefinitely on the outputs of the noise source while the noise source is operating... these tests are run continuously on all digitized samples obtained from the noise source, and so tests must have a very low probability of raising a false alarm." On-demand tests: "can be called at any time... it does require that the entropy source be capable of performing on-demand health tests." Rebooting is an acceptable way to trigger these if it re-runs the start-up tests. Quote from: Charles-Tim on August 04, 2026, 11:58:03 AM Make use of passphrase that has strong characters orr use a multisig wallet. Add your own protection to it. This is trivial routine for me, but not for many users. :) Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: hosemary on August 04, 2026, 12:25:41 PM Isn't the amount of entropy determined by the source of entropy and the algorithm the software uses to generate it? For example, if you generate millions of seed phrases through electrum, they all will have 132 bits of entropy, regardless of the final results. Also, even if the algorithm is flawed, the final result will still look completely random and there is no way to tell how random it is just by checking the final result. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 12:58:54 PM Quote from: hosemary on August 04, 2026, 12:25:41 PM Isn't the amount of entropy determined by the source of entropy and the algorithm the software uses to generate it? Hardware noise sources may fail or degrade. But what would be suitable for given hardware wallet to catch the software bug the current ColdCard case that swaps out the hardware entropy source and produces the plausible looking but predictable output I don't really know. That is why I have raised the discussion here. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: Mia Chloe on August 04, 2026, 01:41:41 PM Quote from: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM Been thinking about this after the Coldcard drama.Excerpt only. The complete copy is held offline and backs quotations on this site. The original publication remains the canonical public source.
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The thread gained posts noting WalletScrutiny added Coldcard Mk4 warnings only after the hack, benchmarking NIST entropy-assessment runtimes, and debating developer responsibility for entropy warnings.
Recovered from the Internet Archive rather than captured by this project. The row records that third-party provenance separately from captures made by this project.
What changed from the previous capture 34 lines
Second, they can know about that by themselves in wallet development process or by community reports such as the Coldcard team, but they decided to ignore that security weakness. Do you think such wallet developers team will add warnings in their own wallet softwares/ products/ models? If you want to have such insightful technical warnings, you can make your proposal to this site team https://walletscrutiny.com/. Ask them to add security check on wallets related to seed entropy and add it to their wallet reviews. +Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? +Post by: nc50lc on August 09, 2026, 06:15:02 AM +Quote from: hd49728 on Today at 03:30:34 AM +If you want to have such insightful technical warnings, you can make your proposal to this site team https://walletscrutiny.com/. Ask them to add security check on wallets related to seed entropy and add it to their wallet reviews. +I doubt that it'll be 100% reliable. +For example, the recent Coldcard MK4 warnings (https://walletscrutiny.com/hardware/coldcardMk4/) in their websites are only added after the hack while the issue was present way before their initial code audit. +Before, it's listed as one of the "good wallets" without any listed issue, archived: +2025 Nov: web.archive.org/web/20251110132002/https://walletscrutiny.com/hardware/coldcardMk4/ (https://web.archive.org/web/20251110132002/https://walletscrutiny.com/hardware/coldcardMk4/) +2026 Apr: web.archive.org/web/20260417212232/https://walletscrutiny.com/hardware/coldcardMk4/ (https://web.archive.org/web/20260417212232/https://walletscrutiny.com/hardware/coldcardMk4/) +Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? +Post by: ABCbits on August 09, 2026, 07:13:34 AM +Quote from: vapourminer on August 08, 2026, 11:43:30 PM +Quote from: ABCbits on August 05, 2026, 09:00:51 AM +FWIW, the implementation for that standard already exist on https://github.com/usnistgov/SP800-90B_EntropyAssessment (https://github.com/usnistgov/SP800-90B_EntropyAssessment). NIST code and PDF doesn't mention how long the test took. But i found a research that benchmark the test time. +Quote from: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7959633/ +NIST program written in Python NIST program written in C++ +IID test 17 h 1 h 10 min +[IID track] Estimation entropy − − +[Non-IID track] Estimation entropy 15 min 20 s +Restart tests 2 s 2 min +Total execution time 17 h 16 min 1 h 13 min +Over 1 hour for full test isn't practical, i expect most people don't want to wait that long. +i burn in new drives, memory, basically any new computer gear and absolutely hammer them for literally days before i entrust them with even my cat pictures. +for bitcoin i can see testing for a lot longer if i could figure out how, and im just a end user. +From what i understand so far, such test can't be done by end or average user. The test itself must use the generated and processed entropy/random number directly from the wallet as the input, which means either, +1. the wallet itself must implement this test. +2. you modify the wallet source code to save the generated and processed entropy/random number to a file, before feeding it as input to the test software. +Following good guide that generate entropy or random number from a dice is more practical option. +Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? +Post by: Pmalek on August 09, 2026, 07:32:42 AM +If the developers and project owners have a reliable and secure way to check that the keys are not secure enough and that the numbers aren't random enough, they should display a warning. But it's a question of whether or not it's an easy thing for them to verify. +Quote from: Zaguru12 on August 04, 2026, 01:52:32 PM +The only reason why I think most people are challenging or blaming cold card is simply because there was reports that their system source (TRNG) wasn�t that random as it was broke but they didn�t take that warning or acted upon it and it was what lead to this, which is why I also call for them to be blamed +If NVK didn't decide to switch to a non open-source license and mess around, the scandal wouldn't have happened. He has been arrogant for years. He was the first to gloat whenever something bad happened to other hardware wallet manufacturers and quickly talk about the strengths of his own product. People didn't like him. Powered by SMF 1.1.19 | SMF © 2006-2009, Simple MachinesExtracted text as captured
Bitcoin Forum Bitcoin => Wallet software => Topic started by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM Title: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM Been thinking about this after the Coldcard drama. Right now, most wallets software and hardware generate your SEED phrase and hand it to you with zero indication of whether the underlying randomness was actually good. No warning, no way to know. In my view, it would be very welcome if wallets performed the relevant self checking on the quality of the entropy used to generate user's wallet, and warned user if the entropy falls below, say, 128 bits. Either way, something as simple as: "Entropy below recommended minimum, proceed anyway? Yes/No" would at least surface the problem instead of silently handing someone SEED phrase that could potentially be compromised. It's probably the right time to raise this matter with hardware wallet makers and software developers. Curious what people think about this. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: Charles-Tim on August 04, 2026, 11:58:03 AM Example, how would Coldcard warn when its developers do not even know about it? Or maybe the developers know about it and are behind what happened. Use open source wallet. Make use of passphrase that has strong characters or use a multisig wallet. Adding your own protection (like passphrase or multisig) to it makes your wallet secure. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 12:16:39 PM Quote from: Charles-Tim on August 04, 2026, 11:58:03 AM How would Coldcard warn that when its developers do not even know about it? Or maybe the developers know and are behind what happened. ColdCard and other wallet developers could implement self-testing feature based on NIST SP 800-90B standard. Quote from: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-90B.pdf 4.2 Types of Health Tests Start-up tests: run after power-up/reboot, before first use. "The specific conditions in which the startup tests must be run for FIPS-validated cryptographic modules are determined by the requirements of FIPS 140." Continuous tests: "run indefinitely on the outputs of the noise source while the noise source is operating... these tests are run continuously on all digitized samples obtained from the noise source, and so tests must have a very low probability of raising a false alarm." On-demand tests: "can be called at any time... it does require that the entropy source be capable of performing on-demand health tests." Rebooting is an acceptable way to trigger these if it re-runs the start-up tests. Quote from: Charles-Tim on August 04, 2026, 11:58:03 AM Make use of passphrase that has strong characters orr use a multisig wallet. Add your own protection to it. This is trivial routine for me, but not for many users. :) Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: hosemary on August 04, 2026, 12:25:41 PM Isn't the amount of entropy determined by the source of entropy and the algorithm the software uses to generate it? For example, if you generate millions of seed phrases through electrum, they all will have 132 bits of entropy, regardless of the final results. Also, even if the algorithm is flawed, the final result will still look completely random and there is no way to tell how random it is just by checking the final result. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 12:58:54 PM Quote from: hosemary on August 04, 2026, 12:25:41 PM Isn't the amount of entropy determined by the source of entropy and the algorithm the software uses to generate it? Hardware noise sources may fail or degrade. But what would be suitable for given hardware wallet to catch the software bug the current ColdCard case that swaps out the hardware entropy source and produces the plausible looking but predictable output I don't really know. That is why I have raised the discussion here. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: Mia Chloe on August 04, 2026, 01:41:41 PM Quote from: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM Been thinking about this after the Coldcard drama.Excerpt only. The complete copy is held offline and backs quotations on this site. The original publication remains the canonical public source.
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The thread gained posts benchmarking NIST entropy-assessment runtimes and arguing that wallet developers who ignore weak entropy are unlikely to add warnings.
Recovered from the Internet Archive rather than captured by this project. The row records that third-party provenance separately from captures made by this project.
What changed from the previous capture 24 lines
A good practical example, as random as it may seem, it is not, because human beings are not good at generating their own entropy. In any case, using a wallet with an opensource license, strong passphrase, multisig, adds additional security layers that at least prevent the worst from happening. I believe that we will see a increase of culture and greater demand from costumers and users to demand that brands of hardware wallets and software wallets at least demonstrate that they either use multiple entropy sources or show it through the code (even if most of users do not have the technical knowledge to fully understand it). +Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? +Post by: vapourminer on August 08, 2026, 11:43:30 PM +Quote from: ABCbits on August 05, 2026, 09:00:51 AM +FWIW, the implementation for that standard already exist on https://github.com/usnistgov/SP800-90B_EntropyAssessment (https://github.com/usnistgov/SP800-90B_EntropyAssessment). NIST code and PDF doesn't mention how long the test took. But i found a research that benchmark the test time. +Quote from: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7959633/ +NIST program written in Python NIST program written in C++ +IID test 17 h 1 h 10 min +[IID track] Estimation entropy − − +[Non-IID track] Estimation entropy 15 min 20 s +Restart tests 2 s 2 min +Total execution time 17 h 16 min 1 h 13 min +Over 1 hour for full test isn't practical, i expect most people don't want to wait that long. +i burn in new drives, memory, basically any new computer gear and absolutely hammer them for literally days before i entrust them with even my cat pictures. +for bitcoin i can see testing for a lot longer if i could figure out how, and im just a end user. +Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? +Post by: hd49728 on August 09, 2026, 03:30:34 AM +Quote from: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM +Right now, most wallets software and hardware generate your SEED phrase and hand it to you with zero indication of whether the underlying randomness was actually good. No warning, no way to know. +Either way, something as simple as: "Entropy below recommended minimum, proceed anyway? Yes/No" would at least surface the problem instead of silently handing someone SEED phrase that could potentially be compromised. +It can not happen by some following main reasons. +First of all, it is from the wallet developer team. If they are incapable technically, they don't know that their wallet products/ models have not enough and weak entropy of wallet seeds. +Second, they can know about that by themselves in wallet development process or by community reports such as the Coldcard team, but they decided to ignore that security weakness. +Do you think such wallet developers team will add warnings in their own wallet softwares/ products/ models? +If you want to have such insightful technical warnings, you can make your proposal to this site team https://walletscrutiny.com/. Ask them to add security check on wallets related to seed entropy and add it to their wallet reviews. Powered by SMF 1.1.19 | SMF © 2006-2009, Simple MachinesExtracted text as captured
Bitcoin Forum Bitcoin => Wallet software => Topic started by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM Title: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM Been thinking about this after the Coldcard drama. Right now, most wallets software and hardware generate your SEED phrase and hand it to you with zero indication of whether the underlying randomness was actually good. No warning, no way to know. In my view, it would be very welcome if wallets performed the relevant self checking on the quality of the entropy used to generate user's wallet, and warned user if the entropy falls below, say, 128 bits. Either way, something as simple as: "Entropy below recommended minimum, proceed anyway? Yes/No" would at least surface the problem instead of silently handing someone SEED phrase that could potentially be compromised. It's probably the right time to raise this matter with hardware wallet makers and software developers. Curious what people think about this. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: Charles-Tim on August 04, 2026, 11:58:03 AM Example, how would Coldcard warn when its developers do not even know about it? Or maybe the developers know about it and are behind what happened. Use open source wallet. Make use of passphrase that has strong characters or use a multisig wallet. Adding your own protection (like passphrase or multisig) to it makes your wallet secure. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 12:16:39 PM Quote from: Charles-Tim on August 04, 2026, 11:58:03 AM How would Coldcard warn that when its developers do not even know about it? Or maybe the developers know and are behind what happened. ColdCard and other wallet developers could implement self-testing feature based on NIST SP 800-90B standard. Quote from: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-90B.pdf 4.2 Types of Health Tests Start-up tests: run after power-up/reboot, before first use. "The specific conditions in which the startup tests must be run for FIPS-validated cryptographic modules are determined by the requirements of FIPS 140." Continuous tests: "run indefinitely on the outputs of the noise source while the noise source is operating... these tests are run continuously on all digitized samples obtained from the noise source, and so tests must have a very low probability of raising a false alarm." On-demand tests: "can be called at any time... it does require that the entropy source be capable of performing on-demand health tests." Rebooting is an acceptable way to trigger these if it re-runs the start-up tests. Quote from: Charles-Tim on August 04, 2026, 11:58:03 AM Make use of passphrase that has strong characters orr use a multisig wallet. Add your own protection to it. This is trivial routine for me, but not for many users. :) Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: hosemary on August 04, 2026, 12:25:41 PM Isn't the amount of entropy determined by the source of entropy and the algorithm the software uses to generate it? For example, if you generate millions of seed phrases through electrum, they all will have 132 bits of entropy, regardless of the final results. Also, even if the algorithm is flawed, the final result will still look completely random and there is no way to tell how random it is just by checking the final result. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 12:58:54 PM Quote from: hosemary on August 04, 2026, 12:25:41 PM Isn't the amount of entropy determined by the source of entropy and the algorithm the software uses to generate it? Hardware noise sources may fail or degrade. But what would be suitable for given hardware wallet to catch the software bug the current ColdCard case that swaps out the hardware entropy source and produces the plausible looking but predictable output I don't really know. That is why I have raised the discussion here. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: Mia Chloe on August 04, 2026, 01:41:41 PM Quote from: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM Been thinking about this after the Coldcard drama.Excerpt only. The complete copy is held offline and backs quotations on this site. The original publication remains the canonical public source.
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Recovered from the Internet Archive rather than captured by this project. The row records that third-party provenance separately from captures made by this project.
What changed from the previous capture 0 lines
Extracted text as captured
Bitcoin Forum Bitcoin => Wallet software => Topic started by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM Title: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM Been thinking about this after the Coldcard drama. Right now, most wallets software and hardware generate your SEED phrase and hand it to you with zero indication of whether the underlying randomness was actually good. No warning, no way to know. In my view, it would be very welcome if wallets performed the relevant self checking on the quality of the entropy used to generate user's wallet, and warned user if the entropy falls below, say, 128 bits. Either way, something as simple as: "Entropy below recommended minimum, proceed anyway? Yes/No" would at least surface the problem instead of silently handing someone SEED phrase that could potentially be compromised. It's probably the right time to raise this matter with hardware wallet makers and software developers. Curious what people think about this. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: Charles-Tim on August 04, 2026, 11:58:03 AM Example, how would Coldcard warn when its developers do not even know about it? Or maybe the developers know about it and are behind what happened. Use open source wallet. Make use of passphrase that has strong characters or use a multisig wallet. Adding your own protection (like passphrase or multisig) to it makes your wallet secure. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 12:16:39 PM Quote from: Charles-Tim on August 04, 2026, 11:58:03 AM How would Coldcard warn that when its developers do not even know about it? Or maybe the developers know and are behind what happened. ColdCard and other wallet developers could implement self-testing feature based on NIST SP 800-90B standard. Quote from: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-90B.pdf 4.2 Types of Health Tests Start-up tests: run after power-up/reboot, before first use. "The specific conditions in which the startup tests must be run for FIPS-validated cryptographic modules are determined by the requirements of FIPS 140." Continuous tests: "run indefinitely on the outputs of the noise source while the noise source is operating... these tests are run continuously on all digitized samples obtained from the noise source, and so tests must have a very low probability of raising a false alarm." On-demand tests: "can be called at any time... it does require that the entropy source be capable of performing on-demand health tests." Rebooting is an acceptable way to trigger these if it re-runs the start-up tests. Quote from: Charles-Tim on August 04, 2026, 11:58:03 AM Make use of passphrase that has strong characters orr use a multisig wallet. Add your own protection to it. This is trivial routine for me, but not for many users. :) Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: hosemary on August 04, 2026, 12:25:41 PM Isn't the amount of entropy determined by the source of entropy and the algorithm the software uses to generate it? For example, if you generate millions of seed phrases through electrum, they all will have 132 bits of entropy, regardless of the final results. Also, even if the algorithm is flawed, the final result will still look completely random and there is no way to tell how random it is just by checking the final result. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 12:58:54 PM Quote from: hosemary on August 04, 2026, 12:25:41 PM Isn't the amount of entropy determined by the source of entropy and the algorithm the software uses to generate it? Hardware noise sources may fail or degrade. But what would be suitable for given hardware wallet to catch the software bug the current ColdCard case that swaps out the hardware entropy source and produces the plausible looking but predictable output I don't really know. That is why I have raised the discussion here. Title: Re: Should wallets warn users about low-quality entropy during SEED generation? Post by: Mia Chloe on August 04, 2026, 01:41:41 PM Quote from: satscraper on August 04, 2026, 11:52:06 AM Been thinking about this after the Coldcard drama.Excerpt only. The complete copy is held offline and backs quotations on this site. The original publication remains the canonical public source.
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