With the BitBox02, you can now use payment requests to ensure your transactions are secure and untampered.
Let’s take a look at how this works:
💡 Reminder: Computers and smartphones are vulnerable to malware. The BitBox02 isolates critical Bitcoin operations, ensuring security even if your host device is compromised.
🔑 If you shouldn’t trust the host device, how can you be sure that the deposit address from an exchange is legitimate?
If your computer is compromised, attackers can easily replace the exchange deposit address that is displayed in your browser with one that is controlled by an attacker!
📱 Verifying the deposit address on a second device can help, but is rarely an option on exchanges and cumbersome to use - especially when you don’t have a second device available.
🔐 Introducing payment requests: Exchanges sign your deposit address with their private key, and the BitBox02 verifies this signature against a public key that is stored within its firmware.
This guarantees that you are sending Bitcoin to an address controlled by the exchange.
If the signature for the address does not match the stored public key for the exchange, the BitBox02 rejects the payment request.
This verification happens in the background. All the user has to do is to make sure the BitBox02 displays the correct exchange or service name on its transaction confirmation screen. No need to even check the bitcoin address! ✨
🏦 Verifying banking details: The exchange or service can also choose to include data in the payment request, such as banking details, which will be displayed on the BitBox02 verification screen!
Our first partner to introduce this feature is Pocket Bitcoin, users will soon be able to sell Bitcoin securely from within the BitBoxApp!
We hope to see many other services introduce this security feature in the future (Kraken? Swan?)!
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🔄 In summary: the BitBox02’s payment request feature eliminates address spoofing and enhances the user experience, making Bitcoin transactions both easier and safer.
Learn more about this on our blog post: https://bitbox.swiss/blog/using-payment-requests-to-securely-send-bitcoin-to-an-exchange/