This is meant purely as an educational guide of how I secure Somnium Space ERC-20 & ERC-721 tokens. Following this guide and any of the information here-in is your own responsibility. Neither the author of this article nor Somnium Times can be held responsible.
This guide was made using a Ledger Nano X with Ledger Live 1.12.0 on a Windows 10 Pro 64-bit machine with current updates, Brave 64-bit v1.3.115 and ESET NOD32 12.0.24.0 Antivirus.
The principles I employ below are only a portion of the layered approach I use to ensure the highest levels of security and are still far from fool proof. If you choose to use my method please do so at your own risk, I am not liable for your own security practices. These are simply some of my best practices and I am sharing them so others may learn better ways to protect their data. If you choose to skip steps, you do so at your own peril. This is for educational purposes only.
I will take you step by step in how I create a clean Windows user account, configure a new Ledger Nano X hardware device, configure Ledger Live, and configure a new Metamask in Brave web browser.
Windows
Create new local user account on your PC.
- Hit “WIN+S” (Windows Button). In the search field type “CONTROL PANEL” <ENTER>
- Click on “USER ACCOUNTS”
- Click “MANAGE ANOTHER ACCOUNT”
- Click “ADD A USER ACCOUNT” (You may be asked to enter an Administrator password)
- Click “SIGN IN WITHOUT A MICROSOFT ACCOUNT”, click “NEXT”
- Click “LOCAL ACCOUNT”
- Enter the “NAME, PASSWORD, & HINT”, then click “NEXT”
Now the new user account has been created. Log off your current account and into the new account you just created. The reason for creating a new account is so that any malware that may infect the current user that is not in a root or admin account, will not affect the newly created user. This may not be helpful if a user always is logged in with administrator level privileges. I recommend that on first startup you enable the privacy settings as shown below:
LEDGER NANO
Setting up Ledger Nano (Nano S & Nano X have been tested). For this article I will detail the Ledger Nano X.
- Plug in your Ledger device and follow the hardware on screen instructions to setup a new device from the hardware screen. You will first have to set a pin. Use the left and right buttons to change the numbers and then press both buttons on the hardware to select.
- Then the Ledger will ask you to write down the 24 phrase seed and then verify it on the hardware.
Verifying the seed on the Ledger device is more of a pain than doing it in the Ledgerlive application, but it prevents any malware from reading the seed. I highly recommend you take the time to do this the right way and write down the seed with a pen and the cards included in the box using the hardware to verify. I typically make two sets of cards and hide them in different physical, yet secure locations.
The card should look like the one above (now I suggest you copy it by hand and put them in two different physical locations that are secure like a safe at home and a safe at work).
DO NOT TAKE A PHOTO OF THE CARD OR COPY THE SEED ONTO A FILE ON YOUR COMPUTER!
Your seed is the key to the kingdom and should only be used to restore to a new Ledger if your current hardware dies.
This will complete the initialization of the Ledger device so now we are ready to setup the software applications.
