Keyruptive is INESC TEC's most recent spin-off

Keyruptive is INESC TEC's most recent spin-off and it operates in the IT security area. It was born in Braga, being the result of a work of many years from a group of researchers of INESC TEC’s High-Assurance Software Laboratory (HASLab), and already has a technology solution to present to the market, whose name is the same as the company that was created.

The Keyruptive technology is a mobile wallet that stores crypto coins in a secure and convenient way. This solution allows the access and management of funds in an intuitive way and with high availability, while maintaining a level of security comparable to that of hardware devices.

The idea of developing the Keyruptive mobile wallet arose from the need to make the storage of the keys that allow the transaction of the digital coins more secure. Before Keyruptive, the users basically had three options.

"One of the options available to users is to store their keys on third party platforms, which results in a loss of control over them and the exposure to problems deriving from those platforms. It should be noted that losses related to security problems in this type of solutions already go up to several million euros. The second option would be to store the keys in a specific device, for example in a telephone or a computer, while the loss of that device implies the loss of funds. The third option, perceived as the safest one, is the use of specific hardware, but it has the inconvenience of being extremely difficult to use and to prevent an everyday use”, explains Francisco Maia, researcher of HASLab and one of the founders of INESC TEC’s most recent spin-off.

This technology offers the ability to give users full control over their funds and information and, at the same time, the ability to use services that enable their management in a convenient, easy and useful way. The potential impact of the technology is to be a vehicle for the true digitalisation of money and its management.

"What makes Keyruptive so secure is that the key is never stored in a single location at the same time, allowing you to store 'pieces of information' in existing storage services like googledrive or dropbox. The user of the wallet is the only person who controls the key, since we don’t have access to the locations where it is stored”, explained the researcher.

The technology has already been publicly presented in the 6th edition of Startup Braga's acceleration programme and starting from July, the app will be available on Android and iOS operating systems. Researchers are now trying to collect about EUR 400 000 in order to continue developing the solution. The team of researchers responsible for Keyruptive, which is composed of Francisco Maia and Francisco Cruz, believes that this solution will make the crypto coin markets more accessible.

It’s already possible to learn more about this app and to become an exclusive member of this technological solution here: http://keyruptive.com/

The researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC.