Rivetz Ensures ‘Passwords go Away’

Gone are the days of train robberies on horseback. However, as technology advances, so do criminals. In 2013 a report divulged that the malicious Malware Carbanak allowed perpetrators to transfer exorbitant amounts of money to fake accounts and ATMs, monitored by sophisticated sleuths. Allegedly the amount stolen is close to a staggering $1 billion, and opportunities continue to prevail.

“As users, we have been plagued with identity theft and real property theft on the Internet. [The] industry keeps adding more complexity and a desire to train users to help combat this theft but it has not been working.”
— – Steven Sprague, founder and CEO of Rivetz

Rivetz was incorporated in 2013 and, according to Sprague;  provides consumers with a safer and simpler online experience, aims to provide service providers with a stronger and more valuable relationship with their customers, and is designed to create a built-in solution to securing networks.

Sprague explains that every year, cybercrime has been rising, and as more and more of our lives depend on the Internet, “it is starting to become a nation-state security issue.” Rivetz intends to make it simple, and secure, to connect web services to trusted hardware in phones, tablets and PC’s.

“When you can trust a device to provide basic uncompromised instructions and transactions, you can deliver more value with more convenience.”
— – Rivetz

Rivetz provides security tools for the Bitcoin industry, but the tools are not solely for the protection of Bitcoin private keys. At a Miami Bitcoin conference Sprague saw a need to secure private keys, and form high quality instructions on the blockchain – that ensure transactions with cryptocurrency are secure  “[They] are a perfect applications of our technology. We have been solidly on the path since then.” Sprague states.

Sprague explains that the team at Rivetz has applied experience in Trusted Computing, where a computer will consistently behave in expected ways and those behaviors will be enforced by computer hardware and software. Enforcing this behavior is achieved by loading the hardware with a unique encryption key inaccessible to the rest of the system. The team also has experience with Trusted Execution which defends against software-based attacks, aimed at stealing sensitive information by corrupting system code or configuration. “The ability to apply that to the cryptocurrency market, identity market and cloud services solutions makes us unique.” Sprague states.

“Trusted computing is, itself, a complex topic with many of its own great challenges, and we are very focused on leveraging this technology [with] key hardware partners to help users have a simpler and safer experience on the ’Net’.”
— – Sprague

ARM based Android devices already have hardware security tools built in, Trustonics’ Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). The Rivets application is designed to work with TEE, acting as a second layer of security within the device. In addition to building on TEE, Rivetz uses a Trusted User Interface, which enables a PIN entry, and displays transaction details, prior to completing a transfer. This in turn presents the user with an additional authorization layer for their chosen Bitcoin wallet. Rivetz demonstrated the process with a secure bitPay transaction using two Galaxy 4 phones, and a demo wallet app named Rosie. Sprague told BNC that in the not too distant future they plan to integrate multi-sig and Hierarchical Deterministic wallet support.

Security is currently plagued with by requirement to remember passwords, and we are all encouraged to use different passwords for different applications. “In the future, you’ll log into your devices and your devices will log you into the world. By leveraging the Trusted Execution Environment, the device can not only store keys but also secure the processing of those keys and data to create transactions,” said Sprague.

“In the end, the user will see it as passwords go away and are replaced by registering a device.”
— – Sprague

Factom recently partnered with Rivetz and are excited about the future stating, “A record keeping system is only as secure as it’s weakest point, and often that’s compromised hardware. With Rivetz, we can build distributed systems with multi-authenticated identity tools at a hardware level."

Factom selected Rivetz “to integrate world cyber-security for the Factom applications.” A recent press release stated, “This collaboration will leverage Rivetz’s Trusted Execution model for the secure protection and processing of data and collection of user intent with Factom’s data layer on the blockchain to provide organizations in the financial, manufacturing, distribution and wholesale industries with the efficient means of verifying processes and registering data.”

“No one knows more about trusted computing in the space than Steven.”
— – Peter Kirby, Factom CEO and co-founder

Kirby went on to explain, “They’ve secured some major hardware vendors and soon their system will be live in most of the new Android phones.”