The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is looking for specialists who would teach its employees to hack hardware wallets for storing cryptocurrencies. This is written by Vice with reference to the document published in March.
As the IRS notes, hardware wallets pose a problem for the investigation. Even if such a wallet falls into the hands of law enforcement officers, it is impossible to access it without the help of the owner. In other words, they cannot promptly "investigate the movement of currencies", and this also "prevents the withdrawal and recovery" of funds.
At the same time, the IRS is not interested in a single hack, but in a tool for reusable use. Security researcher Andrew Tierney considers this condition problematic.
"Hardware wallets are now becoming quite secure. It may be possible to find vulnerabilities in some of them, but it will be very difficult to find ready-made exploits that would work against their users, " he said. – Another snag is that the funds are not actually in the wallet. It's just the keys. If someone else finds out that they are able to hack the device, the funds can be moved."
"I think they're overdoing it," said Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Institute of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. – For most of these devices, the choice will be enough: 'Either you give us the password, or you will rot in prison for failing to comply with a court order.'"
Earlier it became known that the IRS will get access to the data of Poloniex exchange customers and is going to get the data of Kraken customers.