![](http://i.imgur.com/AtGlxi5.png)
## Is Airbitz going to protect Steemit private keys with their Edge Security Application?? 

A friend of mine attended a conference where Paul Puey (CEO of [Airbitz](https://airbitz.co/) aka @paullinator) was giving a talk, part way through this talk Paul was discussing their current offering's and how there edge security platform allows 3rd party partners protection for their users private keys by integrating their services with Airbitz mobile wallet. This integration allows the end user to store private information within their Airbitz account and have their credentials/keys and other private information wrapped in the Airbitz security layer. 
![](http://i.imgur.com/bwYNIKY.jpg)

This would allow Steem users to store their private keys within Airbitz with the following benefits
* AES256 bit encryption 
* Automatic Backups
* Single sign on username and password convenience 
* Account recovery through Airbitz services 
* 2 Factor Authentication
* Multi device portability

Airbitz has been around for a few years now and their Airbitz mobile wallet offering has always focused on seamless security with convenience for their users.This mind set allows users to recover their lost data via their Airbitz username and password without ever once having to manually backup a keys or write down, store and secure a 12-24 word mnemonic seed. All this is done in a way that feels natural and convenient for the every day user, but for existing bitcoin users some alarm bells maybe ringing but i encourage you to look into the methods used to encrypt and backup the data.

## How does this seamless backup and encryption work?
My understanding of the process is as follow; the username and password are hashed with Scrypt using a large number of rounds (account creation takes 10-30 seconds and longer on older devices - good brute force protection). The resulting hash is used for symmetric encryption of the wallet data (keys, meta data, tagging).

This encrypted blob of data is uploaded to Airbitz servers and identified with a hash of the decryption key  
#### Example:
~~~~ 
username and password -> hash = Encryption key -> Hash = Authentication key/Identification 
~~~~

another way to look at it is: 
~~~~ 
Authentication key/Identification = Hash(Hash(Username+Password))).
~~~~

#### Recovery
Therefore if a user lost their phone they would be able to use their username and password to 'restore' their data in a fresh installation of Airbitz, this would take the username and password double hash it then attempt to download the encrypted data residing on the airbitz server identified by Hash(Hash(Username+Password))); once this data has been downloaded to the wallet it would then use Hash(Username+Password) to decrypt the wallet.

## What is Edge Security? 
![](http://i.imgur.com/O0P4Iom.png)
*From Airbitz:*

Instead of relying on enterprise server security, Edge-Security encrypts data first the user's device before it ever touches a network or server. A server-side hack yields nothing but fully encrypted, private data. A hack on a user’s device yields only the data of that one user vs millions of users. The incentive to attack the system is reduced by orders of magnitude.

Airbitz provides the world’s first edge security platform that allows developers to build apps that secure users’ data at 
“The Edge” utilizing several key technologies simultaneously.


## What features would this enable?? can i vote with Airbitz?
I cannot find any further information relating to the functionalities that might be added for Steem users; i could not actually find any information on this integration what so ever.. but i can speculate :)

With Steemit integration maybe there could be a type of OAuth solution that would allow users to authenticate with Steemits servers although with out passing the private key to the browser or Airbitz having an internal browser i cannot think how this could be used to post and vote on content without a native mobile application. 

With a native application in a similar fashion to a Trezor a steemit app could pass a pre-constructed transaction (post or vote) to the Airbitz wallet for signing and broadcasting.

It could act as a wallet by allowing users to enter recipient, amount and memo which would be signed by the private key and broadcast to the network! add to this the 2nd factor of authentication this maybe a interesting way for people to secure their funds in the future. 

Airbitz as a popular Bitcoin wallet for both Android and IOS could enable its massive user base to be online with Steem overnight.

We already have a very slick looking mobile wallet [Steempay](https://steemit.com/steempay/@cass/steempay-io-mobile-payment-solution-ui-ux-playground) in development and given that Steem is one of the Limited Crypto Currencies that has Apples approval the options are limited for a pre-existing wallet... Look out for Jaxx integration (they already have 3 of the 7 approved coins integrated) :) 

In the future if we can get Apple to list Bitshares on it's approved list, then it will be an easy integration for any platform that supports Steem given it is the same code base, most of the hard work will already be done.  

This is all just blind speculation but it will be interesting to see if @paullinator can share his vision of how this may benefit Steemians going forward...

![](http://i.imgur.com/qTcbSjH.png)

#### What are your thoughts? How can Edge security or this form of integration benefit Steem/Steemit users??