Announcing the Ledger Recover Cryptographic Protocol White Paper

We are pleased to share the now-published Ledger Recover Cryptographic Protocol White Paper for review.

In our ongoing effort to build in a transparent and collaborative way, we are publishing the detailed technical White Paper on Ledger Recover, provided by Coincover. This document covers the system design, architecture, and operational flows of Ledger Recover, our advanced solution for backing up and restoring the Ledger device’s Secret Recovery Phrase. As a reminder, Ledger Recover is an entirely optional and opt-in paid subscription service that does not impact the security of your Ledger.

In this white paper, you will find thorough coverage of Ledger Recover’s system design, the cryptographic protocol design and security goals, as well as details on the three primary operational flows:

• Backing up your Secret Recovery Phrase 

• Restoring it on a new Ledger device

• Securely deleting your backups

We are also making the Ledger Recover White Paper available on our GitHub repository. We encourage developers, researchers, and crypto-enthusiasts alike to read this White Paper in detail to understand the underlying cryptographic protocol of Ledger Recover. 

Feedback is welcomed and encouraged! We are excited to hear your constructive feedback and  suggestions for improvement.

To read the Ledger Recover Cryptographic Protocol White Paper, visit our GitHub repository here.

We are pleased to share this milestone with our community and look forward to your valuable insights and contributions. This is just one of many next steps to continue making our Ledger operating system accessible for verification. You can see where we are on this roadmap below.

What’s next?

While this White Paper focuses on the technical aspects of the Ledger Recover, provided by Coincover, cryptographic protocol, there is much more we want to share with you. We will soon publish a series of blog posts called, “The Genesis of Ledger Recover,” written by different leaders in this project. This series will go further into our design choices, the thinking process behind this project, operational security features, as well as an in-depth look at our product security reviews conducted throughout the development of Ledger Recover. 

This upcoming blog series will be structured as follows:

• Part One: How we split the Secret Recovery Phrase: An introduction to Shamir Secret Sharing
• Part Two: Secure distribution of shares: End-to-End Secure Channels 
• Part Three: Collusion and leak countermeasures using multiple layers of encryption
• Part Four: How we handle authentication before recovery – the secure use of Identity Verification
• Part Five: An overview of our operational security, both in terms of hardening our infrastructure and securing manual claims processes
• Part Six: Security reviews and audits performed to ensure the security of the service

Stay tuned, the publication of this series will spread Summer 2023!