Is it required Hardware Secure Module (HSM) in Stellar Private Networks ?

msamadi

we are trying to setup a private network with 8 nodes based on Stellar, but really I am worry about Key Management in Stellar, main issues are:
- Root Account .... this account has all native asset and administrators has access to key of this account in logs.
- Seeds in Bridge Server .... any Anchor that need to use Bridge server, must keep Private Keys in config file as plain text.

Is there any HSM solution to manage these keys ? do you have any idea to protect keys from human access ?

Regards,
M. Samadi

dzham

Move all funds away from the root account, or add extra signers to it.

msamadi

dzham
Thanks for your solution.
I saw this solution before, but I think it's not secure enough. when we have 8 anchors in this private network, we can not ask all of them to trust our admins. It should be a automated and non human access. what's your idea about bridge server keys ?

StellarGuard

I do not have such a solution built yet, but business to business is space that StellarGuard is likely to move into in the near future (currently it is just a consumer product).

Is this something you'd be interested in hearing about, or participating in an alpha as it's being developed? The brief overview of it would be that you'd add additional signers to your account (the StellarGuard signer) and then an API to submit and authorize transactions so they are signed by the StellarGuard keys. There would be access controls/limits/audit-able and revokable API keys, with access control and IAM options.

If you don't mind, I have a few questions:

1) Would you be comfortable with a solution that does not use HSM, but instead uses an encryption/decryption using Google KMS? https://cloud.google.com/kms/. Or is using HSM an requirement.

2) Would you use it if this was a Software as a Service model and not something you host on-prem?

Thanks,
Paul from StellarGuard

msamadi

StellarGuard

Thanks for your information.
Our customer is a bank and compare stellar key management solution with "card payment solution". based on PCI requirement all keys should keep in secure hardware and nobody can access to keys directly, so they used HSM and like to see HSM in stellar private network for key management.
They prefer to have dedicated hardware instead of any service for key management.

Best Regards,
Samadi