Frequently Asked Questions

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Unbound Key Control
Our cryptographic key management offering for enterprise.
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Crypto of Things (CoT)
Our endpoint security, IoT, MFA solution.
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Crypto Asset Security (CASP)
Institutional-grade digital asset management with MPC.
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MPC & Technology
Multi-party computation (MPC) – in theory and practice.
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General
Practical questions about Unbound Security.
What is Unbound Crypto-of-Things?
Unbound Crypto-of-Things is the first software-only solution that lets you build a virtual secure enclave directly into the application layer and allow high trust operations from insecure devices.
How does Unbound Crypto-of-Things work?
This is a complicated question to answer but in a nutshell, a unified, single API is used to deploy a virtual root of trust that protects crypto keys at the application level, ensuring they cannot be compromised, cloned or tampered even if the device is infected by malware or controlled by an adversary.
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On what devices can Unbound Crypto-of-Things be deployed?
Unbound Crypto-of-Things can be deployed on any endpoint device and platforms; from IoT and mobile to laptops and even application servers and containers in the cloud or data center to enable high trust operations like document signing, payments, blockchain transactions, and authentication.
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Does Unbound Crypto-of-Things offer real-time tamper proof audit trails?
Yes, Unbound Crypto-of-Things requires communication between the endpoint and the CoT server for performing any crypto operation. Thus, the CoT server includes real-time tamper-proof audit logs of any crypto operation performed on the endpoint, allowing detection of crypto key usage anomalies in real-time.
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What happens if a device is suspected as compromised?
Unbound Crypto-of-Things allows ultimate control by ensuring instant revocation of any crypto key that is secured with CoT. The deletion of the relevant key share on the CoT server immediately renders the key useless, ensuring that any assets protected by this key are safe.
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Is Unbound Crypto-of-Things brute-force proof?
Unbound Crypto-of-Things provides various authentication factors that can be used to authorize any usage of the cryptographic key. The authentication takes place using the MPC algorithm between the endpoint and the CoT server, thus preventing brute force attacks on the endpoint side.
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How easy is it to integrate Unbound Crypto-of-Things with my existing applications & endpoints?
Unbound Crypto-of-Things is very simple to integrate within your applications, with a simple, intuitive and easy to use SDK. The software is very lightweight and integrates with virtually any device, including laptops, mobile, wearables, and other IoT devices.
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Is Unbound Crypto-of-Things future ready?
Yes, Unbound Crypto-of-Things is future-ready, so your cryptography infrastructure can be too. With the emergence of Quantum Computing, Blockchain, and crypto vulnerabilities, changes in crypto are faster than ever. Unbound provides a crypto-agile system that ensures you will be up and running the latest crypto, with update cycles measured in days to weeks, not months or years.
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What deployment architecture options does Unbound Crypto-of-Things support?
Unbound Crypto-of-Things adapts to your organization’s unique needs. That being said, for an overview of potential deployment options, check out our Product Page. If you’d like a brief consultation with one of our experts, feel free to schedule a call here.
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Where can I find more info on Unbound Crypto-of-Things technical specifications?
For starters, download the Unbound Crypto-of-Things Datasheet. You can also visit our Technical Docs. For more questions, don’t hesitate to schedule a brief call with one of our experts.
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What are the components of the CASP Platform?
CASP consists of the components shown in the following diagram:

CASP Architecture The CASP Orchestrator is the heart of the CASP system. It communicates with all parts of the system, initiates creation of the key shares for the vault, manages the different distributed procedures, and acts as the external entry point for the relevant applications, such as the crypto asset applications. The CASP Orchestrator is backed by the powerful key management capabilities of Unbound Key Control (UKC). UKC works together with the Participants to provide the complete approval signature for transactions, where Participants can be mobile devices, desktops, servers, bots, or offline participants. CASP creates an ECDSA key, EdDSA key, or a key with BIP derivation, which is used for all transactions. CASP’s open architecture enables communication with different types of crypto-asset ledgers. For example, the BTC wallet enables communication with a Bitcoin ledger. It prepares a transaction from the available ledger data and sends it to CASP. CASP then signs the transaction and returns it, which then transmits the signed transaction to the ledger. CASP seamlessly works with many different types of ledgers.

Which wallets are currently supported?
All wallets that use ECDSA or EdDSA (Ed25519) algorithms to sign transactions can be supported by CASP using CASP API.
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How does the CASP solution compare to other service provider solutions?
The CASP solution provides these additional capabilities above and beyond the other service providers:
  • Strong MPC implementation for securing private keys.
  • Flexibility and scalability.
  • Cryptographically enforced key usage.
  • Lower TCO.
 
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How complicated is the deployment of CASP?
CASP can be deployed in many cases in a couple of days. Installation is facilitated by the following features:
  1. The CASP server uses a standard RPM installer.
  2. CASP can be installed on many standard operating systems, such as iOS, Android, and Linux.
  3. CASP can be installed anywhere.
  4. A detailed online installation guide is provided that walks you through the prerequisites, CASP installation, and configuration.
Where can I deploy CASP?
CASP can be deployed in various locations:
  1. On a private cloud.
  2. On a public cloud (e.g. AWS, Azure, GCP).
  3. On-premise.
  4. Hybrid deployment (On-premise and public cloud).
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How does the CASP Multi-party signature differ from Multisig?
CASP MPC does not require any additional scripting as required for Multisig for the case of more complex quorums (such as 4 out of 6). Multisig generates multiple signatures, whereas CASP MPC creates just a single signature. Therefore, CASP MPC needs to process less data, making it more efficient, which translates into better performance on the miner side. CASP MPC has a more sophisticated quorum authentication scheme for the approvers. For example, you can have 4 out of 6 required to approve from an external group, and 2 out of 4 required to approve from the internal group. This type of quorum is very hard to implement with multisig (which usually performs only 2 out of 3 quorum authentication).
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Which ledgers are supported?
CASP supports two types of implementations for handling different types of ledgers. CASP provides built-in support for some types of ledgers, as described Built-in Wallets. CASP also provides the necessary APIs so that you can bring your own wallet (BYOW), meaning that you can use whatever ledger you have, and control the vault and key operations with CASP. Using BYOW, you can create an implementation that can handle any coin type, as well as any special operations that you use to communicate with your ledger and for ledger processing. You may want to use BYOW when using one of the built-in chain adaptors, but need other features, such as using your own nodes and address caching. You may already have management in your application for one of the built-in chain adaptors and want to use CASP for key management and protection. BYOW provides the flexibility to be used with any blockchain application.
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What are some common use cases for CASP?
CASP is a flexible platform that can be used in a variety of use case, including the following:
  • Exchanges – Increase velocity and secure your internal vaults by applying MPC-based cryptographic enforcement to transactions’ approval schemes.
    Custodians – Leverage a bank-grade crypto asset security platform to serve your retail and institutional customers, who are seeking crypto-asset custodian and trading services.
  • Trading Platforms – Secure transfers between counter-parties by applying MPC-based cryptographic approval policies.
  • System Integrators – Leverage a mature SDK package to empower your customers to profit from emerging opportunities and market dynamics with the ultimate secure crypto asset security platform.
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Does CASP support HD wallets?
Yes, CASP provides support for hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallets using the BIP32 and BIP44 HD wallet standards.
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How do I connect AML and a customer ID?
It is recommended to use an AML and customer ID approver server/person as one of the participants in the approval process (within a separate group) as a bot approver. By doing so, the AML participant denies a transaction when a suspicious person is trying to transact money. An additional benefit of this strategy is the ability to produce AML-based reports to a regulator, proving that each transaction went through an AML check.
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How is backup approval handled?
The platform creates a secure backup of the key parts without ever bringing the parts together. The process is supported both for standard keys as well as BIP seeds. The key/seed is encrypted with an RSA key, which can be kept in cold backup, HSM, or any other secured component. It is important to note that the platform provides a zero-knowledge proof that the content of the encrypted backup matches the public key. Meaning that when backing up the key, no party can cheat and cause key loss. The platform verifies backup content (without decrypting it, only using the RSA public key) and secured storage of it before the first deposit of money into the vault.
Is there integration with a NaaS provider?
CASP provides the following NaaS provider integration:
  1. BlockCypher
    BlockCypher is a mostly RESTful JSON API for interacting with blockchains, accessed over HTTP or HTTPS from the api.blockcypher.com domain. Currently, BlockCypher supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Testnet3.
  2. Infura
    Infura allows you to access Ethereum via the Infura load-balanced nodes and smart architecture the same way you would via your own nodes. Infura has services and APIs around JSON RPC, REST and Websockets that you can use with your libraries and frameworks on four Ethereum networks.
Does CASP completely support offline participants?
Yes. CASP supports bots that do not have any network connection and only send and receive information by manually transferring the data using hard media, such as a USB drive. See Offline Bots for more information.
Does CASP integrate with HSMs and/or secured key stores?

The CASP bot can be integrated with an HSM. Integration is accomplished using the CASP Participant SDK to extend the CASP bot capabilities, allowing it to store data and create keys in an HSM. The integration is shown in the following figure.

CASP Architecture with offline participants

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Is CASP easy to demo and test?
Yes. CASP can quickly be installed and used for demos, POCs, and development using CASP Express Deploy. This solution is a complete CASP system that is deployed and configured using Docker or Terraform.
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How can Unbound Security protect your cryptographic keys?
Unbound Security makes it harder for attackers to steal your cryptographic keys by splitting your keys into different shares. These shares can be stored on different machines with different operating systems that are controlled by a different set of administrators. This makes it much harder for the hacker to steal the secret since he would have to break into all machines. In addition, by constantly refreshing the shares, the hacker needs to break into all the machines at the same time. We then use MPC to run the cryptographic algorithms without combining these shares together.
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What is Multiparty Computation (MPC)?
MPC allows parties to compute a public function on their private inputs so that no information about the inputs is revealed except the output. For example, two people can determine who is the richest without revealing how rich they are. The private input of each party is his net worth. The public function returns the identity of the party with the highest net worth. To protect secret keys, we split the secret into shares. To use those keys without combining the shares, we use an MPC protocol that takes as private input the shares of the key and then computes a function that depends on the secret key without revealing the key. MPC can be used to securely run encryption, tokenization, digital signatures, and other cryptographic protocols.
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What is unique about Unbound MPC cryptographic technology?
Our technology leverages MPC protocols to protect keys and support standard cryptographic algorithms. Our technology is based on advanced academic research and is developed by leading experts in the field. To guarantee that our protocols are secure, we formally specify protocols and provide rigorous proofs of security. In addition, our protocols are externally reviewed by professors with decades of experience in MPC. Finally, we are the only MPC-based solution that is FIPS 140-2 Level 1 and Level 2 validated.
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Can Unbound support the cryptographic operations that you use?
We support nearly all standard cryptographic operations including digital signatures, key encapsulation, public-key encryptions, symmetric-key primitives, and tokenization. Our solution is compatible with the API of PKCS#11, OpenSSL, Java crypto provider, CAPI and CNG (KSP).
Can MPC be used in high-scale enterprise production environments?
Yes! Many of our products, including code signing, are deployed on a large scale by Fortune 500 companies.
What cryptocurrencies does Unbound support?
Unbound’s solution includes ECDSA, Schnorr, and EdDSA. We can, therefore, support essentially all cryptocurrencies.
What is secret sharing?
Secret sharing is a notion that was introduced in the 1970s and showed how it is possible to share a secret amongst a group of people so that only an authorized subset (or quorum) can reconstruct it. The classic example often given is the passcode for launching nuclear missiles – one wants to be able to distribute the passcode amongst 5 cabinet members so that any 3 out of the 5 who approve the launch can reconstruct the passcode, but no pair of any 2 of the cabinet members can learn anything about the passcode. Secret sharing can be used for splitting secret keys into multiple parts so that only an authorized subset is able to reconstruct them. By placing these keys on different devices (with strong separation between them), this makes it very hard for an attacker to steal the key. Note that secret sharing does not solve the problem of how to prevent an attacker from stealing the key when it is being used since it seems that one needs to reconstruct the key in order to use it. However, this problem can be solved using MPC, as described below.
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What is the difference between MPC and secret sharing?
Secret sharing is a notion that was introduced in the 1970s and showed how it is possible to share a secret amongst a group of people so that only an authorized subset (or quorum) can reconstruct it. The classic example often given is the passcode for launching nuclear missiles – one wants to be able to distribute the passcode amongst 5 cabinet members so that any 3 out of the 5 who approve the launch can reconstruct the passcode, but no pair of any 2 of the cabinet members can learn anything about the passcode. Secret sharing can be used for splitting secret keys into multiple parts so that only an authorized subset is able to reconstruct them. By placing these keys on different devices (with strong separation between them), this makes it very hard for an attacker to steal the key. Note that secret sharing does not solve the problem of how to prevent an attacker from stealing the key when it is being used since it seems that one needs to reconstruct the key in order to use it. However, this problem can be solved using MPC, as described below.
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How can we realize RSA signing using MPC?
To use MPC, we split the RSA signing key into shares. To sign a message, the parties execute two steps. First, each party runs RSA signing operation to produce a partial signature using their share of the key and the message. Finally, the signature is created by multiplying all the partial signatures together.
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What is a threshold encryption scheme?
In a threshold t-out-of-n encryption scheme, the secret key is split into n shares and an encrypted message can only be decrypted if t players agree to decrypt it. For example, we have that RSA decryption and RSA signing are essentially the same operations. As a result, to do threshold RSA decryption, we use the same MPC protocol that is used for RSA signing.
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How does two-party threshold ECDSA work?
Two-party threshold ECDSA is a rather technical protocol and requires a fair bit of expertise to understand. The scientific document for two-party ECDSA was written by our CEO, Professor Yehuda Lindell, and was published in one of the most prestigious cryptography conferences. The paper can be found here and a link to the presentation about the paper can be found here.
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Are you Post-Quantum ready?
Post-quantum cryptography refers to algorithms (for signing, encryption, key exchange, and so on) that remain secure even if a large-scale quantum computer is built. Symmetric encryption schemes are typically already believed to be post-quantum secure, and it suffices to double the key length. Likewise, cryptographic hash functions just require the output to be made sufficiently long. However, for asymmetric schemes (for public-key encryption, digital signing, and key exchange), the most popular schemes based on RSA and discrete log (e.g., Elliptic-curve cryptography) are broken. Fortunately, academia has been looking at these problems for a while, and we do have alternatives. One popular family of algorithms is based on lattices, coding, isogenies, and more (these probably don’t mean too much to you unless you’re a mathematician, but that’s fine – just know that there are people doing this research). NIST is currently running a competition for post-quantum cryptography, and Unbound has partnered in one of the candidates. In any case, what is important to know is that MPC support post-quantum cryptography, and so Unbound’s solutions are ready if quantum computers at scale are ever built (note that this is not at all certain). What is most important now is to be agile and to use systems that support the replacement of cryptographic algorithms. Unbound can also help in this aspect.
What is Unbound's licensing model?
Our licensing model varies per product and implementation level. For more information, contact us.
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Can we see a demo?
Of course. While we do not have a recorded demo online, we encourage you to schedule a 1:1 demo with a Solution Architect who can best understand your organization’s unique cryptographic needs.
Schedule a demo
Do you offer an express PoC?
Of course, we do offer an express PoCs using Docker and Terraform, and we also have sample projects on our Github.
Go to Github
How long does it take to install & set up Unbound's products?
Between 2-4 weeks — or even faster, depending on your requirements. Please contact us so we can discuss your specific needs.
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Can deployment be done remotely?
Yes, all of our implementations are online without any dependence on physical infrastructure.
Where can I find Unbound's technical documentation?
Please see our Technical Documentation page.
Where are your HQs?
Unbound is based out of Petach Tikvah, Israel, with additional teams located in the United States.