IBM announced the launch of IBM Hyper Protect Offline Signing Orchestrator (OSO), an air-gapped cold storage solution for digital assets, on Dec. 5.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Working with digital asset manager Metaco \u2014 an IBM partner and Ripple subsidiary\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and tier-1 banks, IBM developed the end-to-end asset encryption service to address common vulnerabilities found in typical cold storage solutions.<\/p>\n
According to the announcement:<\/p>\n
IBM designed OSO to address these vulnerabilities by removing the manual functions of initiating and conducting transactions. Much like a time-release safe that cannot be opened upon request, OSO can be configured to only send transactions from cold storage to the blockchain, and vice-versa, at specific times or only through the authorization of a multibody governance scheme. <\/p>\n
This, according to the blog post and accompanying research, prevents the most common forms of insider attack, including physical access, administrative manipulation and coercion attacks. If a bad actor were to somehow access the system, physically or remotely, they could only initiate a transaction during approved times and would have to wait until the transaction was approved for execution in order to receive\/steal assets. <\/p>\n
Further ensuring OSO\u2019s resilience to attack, digital assets can be placed in \u201cair-gapped\u201d storage containers. Storage is considered air-gapped when it is not connected to the internet or any device capable of connecting to the internet. This ensures remote attacks can\u2019t access assets while they\u2019re at rest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/o28kWyxoiV8<\/p>\n
Administrators managing cold storage solutions in a typical air-gapped paradigm usually have to hand-carry physical storage devices such as laptops or USB drives to offline hardware in order to sign transactions. This manual process introduces human error, a non-malicious form of attack that can be just as costly as an intentional exploit. <\/p>\n
OSO implements a policy engine that can broker communication between two different applications without simultaneously connecting to both. As it operates through a virtual, partitioned server, via IBM\u2019s Confidential Computing service, it also has no direct external network connectivity. This prevents human error from manual processes as well as remote access (hacking) \u2014 even during transactions.<\/p>\n