Imagine buying a hardware wallet to protect your crypto… only to find out it was spying on you.

paymentflo

paymentflo

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Ledger reportedly discovered hidden spy chips inside certain devices sold by reseller CryptoBilis.

These chips could secretly read users’ 24-word recovery phrases and transmit them to hackers through a cellular network.

On-chain researchers estimate up to $93 million stolen, with $10 million in USDT frozen by Tether.

The scary part? The wallet’s security software wasn’t even hacked. The devices were physically tampered with before reaching customers.

If even hardware wallets can be compromised before purchase, how do we know which ones to trust?


Source: CoinDesk
 
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resellers are the weak link here. i don't touch any device that arrives with a pre-printed seed card or a setup that's already done, always generate your own. did the compromised ones ship that way?
 
The entire situation is insane, I would advocate for HW/cold wallet storage myself but after this what’s the only safe solution? Building your own HW wallet out of loose components?
 
gokasa said:
Because a verified reseller apparently started modifying the hardware of the sold wallets.
Click to expand...
MitM is an attack on the communication channel. It’s all about data, intercepting or tampering with it in transit.

A supply chain attack targets the product itself at some stage of its lifecycle. In this case, at the distribution stage.
 
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lol And now Quantum computers have figured out how to solve the security codes...................... super computers wnet into the wild and took control of an ETH wallet demo


Great time to figure out a solution for all this. You can become rich.
 
You should buy a hardware wallet directly from an official supplier rather than a reseller. For added security, initialize the hardware wallet yourself instead of buying one that has already been set up.
 
paymentflo said:
Ledger reportedly discovered hidden spy chips inside certain devices sold by reseller CryptoBilis.

These chips could secretly read users’ 24-word recovery phrases and transmit them to hackers through a cellular network.

On-chain researchers estimate up to $93 million stolen, with $10 million in USDT frozen by Tether.

The scary part? The wallet’s security software wasn’t even hacked. The devices were physically tampered with before reaching customers.

If even hardware wallets can be compromised before purchase, how do we know which ones to trust?


Source: CoinDesk
Click to expand...
this one is nasty. the implant does not touch the secure element so GC still passes, but it reads the seed off the screen during setup and sends it out :o Third party resellers, even ones that look legit, carry real risk !!
 
I'd only buy hardware wallet directly from the manufacture or an authorized reseller. Even a trusted brand can't fully protect users if the device is tampered with before is reaches them.
 
You should buy a hardware wallet directly from the official stores of manufacturers like Ledger or Trezor.
 
Buy only from the official website or an authorized store, inspect the tamper-evident seal and match the serial number in Ledger Live's device check, but note that a reseller could still replace a sealed unit before shipping.
 
Hackers are always finding innovative ways to steal people's money. Most people won't even notice or know about initializing the wallet. Even I didn't know this.
 
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