https://crypto.news/ledger-confirms-hidden-chip-in-crypto-wa...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JnHdr30v4g
Ledger confirms spy chip implant behind wallet crypto thefts (bleepingcomputer.com)
312 pointsby thm2 days ago271 comments
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Crypto-thieves-sell-hardware-wa...
TacticalCoder 2 days ago
No matter whether you like or hate or don't care about cryptocurrencies, this is incredible stuff...
Now basically: every single attack that's been described as "theoretical" or "far-fetched" or "only existing in the mind of a paranoid person" did actually happen.
We're talking here about a tiny eSIM implant and a little CPU doing OCR on the fonts appearing on the hardware wallet's screen to read the secrets during set up. So the secure element ain't tampered with.
Not long ago the Coldcard hardware wallet had an issue where it'd fallback to a 32-bit only RNG that could be cracked and so many people got their coins stolen.
Now it's Ledger that sees tampered devices all around the world (in Asia for sure but now there are reports about reseller in the EU selling backdoored/eSIM'ed devices).
For people who own Bitcoin at this point one of the only thing kinda sensible to do is to use multisig schemes, like 2-of-2 or 3-of-3 multisig, where your split the secret over two or three different hardware wallet brands (meaning being able to sign a 2-of-2 wallets requires hardware wallets from two different vendors).
When Ledger hardware wallets came out and people said that seed (the list of words) could be intercepted and relayed by a channel bypassing the computer (here by using an eSIM), people would post explaining that people were nuts if they thought such an attack could be pulled off.
Yet here we are.
And Ledger is responsible for very poor security practices: for example it's impossible to use a Ledger hardware wallet in a fully airgapped/offline way. For you're forced to not only upgrade the firmware but also install the Bitcoin "ledger app" (or whatever that is called) after you entered your seed into the device.
Which is complete and total amateur hour.
In addition to that Ledger offers a service to "backup your seed": what could possibly go wrong with that uh?
I'm betting that we'll soon hear about hardware wallets getting drained due to the seed being exfiltrated through "randomness" in how transactions are built/signed (aka "kleptography").
And it's not just representative about people in the cryptocurrencies ecosystem: people simply don't understand computer security and don't understand the potential attacks nor the length at which attackers are willing to go to steal data/funds/ruin other people's lives.
At this point we've heard about chips' plans being modified before the chips are even built (only to lower the entropy of RNGs) [unrelated to cryptocurrencies btw], a worldwide backdoor attempt in SSH, eSIM sending secrets from hardware wallets with tiny attack surfaces.
You're not anywhere near paranoid enough.
winwang 3 hours ago
I remember chatting with about AI a few months ago about the issue of foreign RAM sticks being able to cooperate with websites to serve different files/instructions, undetectably. Scary stuff.
hypfer 3 hours ago
Are you sure whatever the LLM said was actually credible though?
user0917239705 3 hours ago
The idea reminds me somehow of bank card ATM skimmers from old times like this one (2009): https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/heres-what-a-car...
socializer 3 hours ago
> No matter whether you like or hate or don't care about cryptocurrencies, this is incredible stuff...
> Now basically: every single attack that's been described as "theoretical" or "far-fetched" or "only existing in the mind of a paranoid person" did actually happen.
Huh? Nothing here is theoretical or far-fetched. Hardware attacks of this sort have been documented for decades and basically part-and-parcel for most intelligence agencies, from the US govt installing backdoors in Cisco hardware to the exploding pagers for Hamas. This is not even the first hardware wallet attack documented on the internet (although it might be the largest-scale one).
It's just that hardware attacks are complicated, expensive, and risky, so they're usually done in a targeted manner. The only news here is that the crypto community painted a gigantic target on their backs by inventing a currency that can be taken from them with zero recourse, broadcasting it to the world that they own a lot of it, and then buying cheap hardware from overseas retailers to "protect" their assets. So all of sudden, it was profitable and relatively low-risk to cast a wider net.
It's fascinating in the sense that we're discovering from first principles why the financial system works the way it does. The damage caused by cryptocurrencies has been really pretty staggering, for little real benefit.
mmooss 2 hours ago
It is far-fetched because it is an attack by thieves on consumers, not a state intelligence agency and intelligence targets. It's far-fetched for me to fly an B-2 bomber, but it's been commonplace for US government for decades.
apercu 3 hours ago
This is why I sold my bitcoin early - all those years of reading Phrack. Sure, it was $300 at the time and I could have made more, but I had no idea how to securely _store_ it. Still don't.
aaronrobinson 2 hours ago
You are king sensible. Well done. Just $90,000 per BTC worse off ha ha.
apercu 2 hours ago
I had 3 whole bitcoin. Lol.
lynndotpy 2 hours ago
> or "only existing in the mind of a paranoid person" did actually happen.
This reminds me of the 2020 case where a union organizer thought there was a spy camera inside a utility pole outside his house. It was in a conspiracy subreddit, so it seemed like the deranged ramblings of a ravingly-paranoid stranger. But they found the addresses of the IP cams and had plenty of evidence to corroborate it.
Now, Flock cameras are just normal.
I think the 2020s will be defined by this trend. "Things which only existed in the minds of a paranoid person" becoming normal parts of daily life.
mminer237 2 hours ago
Most large cities in the world have had thousands of public CCTV cameras for decades. Traffic enforcement cameras have been super normal for even longer.
lynndotpy 33 minutes ago
I am not talking about those. These cameras were targeted and pointing directly into peoples windows, set up by the local police department, under the guise of being electric utility boxes.
Here are two sources on the matter:
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy_commons/comments/gin79z/...
https://www.fox13memphis.com/news/activists-find-camera-insi...
In August 2020, this was unbelievable, and it would have been considered reasonable (if wrong) to dismiss OP as paranoid, especially for the subreddit they posted in.
Gareth321 2 hours ago
Here I am using an iPhone app like I have been for a decade, feeling safer than ever. I'm really glad I didn't jump on the hardware wallet trend.
wslh 2 hours ago
Not sure if your comment invalidates the context: your iPhone app (or hardware or iOS, etc) could have a bug that was not discovered yet. It's all about attack vectors, and opponent motivation and resources.
troc 2 hours ago
Even iPhone apps:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x46gnh/a_fake_cry...
littlecranky67 22 minutes ago
It always depends how much money you got in the wallet. People in the crypto space go super paranoid, 2-of-3 signing schemes with top-notch security, hardware legers, metal-plated keys that are burried in the woods etc, and in the end they hold less than 1000$ in the wallet... All safety measures should be chosen relative to the amount you are actually securing.
nostrademons 2 hours ago
It speaks a lot to the power of financial incentives. As soon as there's money in it, every conceivable attack to get that money has been tried. Which also mimics what happens in market economies: once there is money in it, every conceivable industry springs up, even things that are absurd or harmful. And money appears to be more powerful than things like laws or governments, in that things that are illegal but profitable happen, while things that are legal and unprofitable do not.
In some ways this is kinda encouraging, because it means that even in cases where society collapses and the government disappears, there are really only two fundamental technologies needed to reboot everything: money and contracts.
gamerdonkey 2 hours ago
I kind of get what you're saying, though I'm not sure how much value money would have without a government to back it up. This is true even for cryptocurrencies. If society collapses and I can't convert to some fiat currency, I don't think I'd trade a bitcoin for six slices of bread.
The incentives lead us toward the classic "Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders." scenario.
https://www.insidehook.com/culture/story-tom-toro-new-yorker...
akiselev an hour ago
> I'm not sure how much value money would have without a government to back it up.
You don't need a government backed paper currency, you need a mint making precious metal coins. History has several examples like the mints at the Potosí silver mines or those by the East India Company that enabled trade without effective governments to back them up by just providing reliable coinage for trade.
As long as there isn't some crazy inflationary force like colonizers arriving with an unlimited supply, we can use something as simple as beads or seashells for currency quite fine. It just means more labor overhead to create that currency in the first place.
NooneAtAll3 an hour ago
doesn't even have to be coins
Somalia operated on paper money valued at the cost of producing it
bombcar an hour ago
"Currency without government" can and has existed, though you could argue circularly that whatever can "issue" a currency is a government of a kind.
How something comes to be is distinct from how it is used.
nostrademons an hour ago
A currency can arise from any fungible, tradable, generally-durable commodity that the bulk of society decides to accept as being worthwhile. In prisons cigarettes often fill that role; in pre-agrarian hunter gatherer groups it's often little baubles like shells. Government isn't necessary for this, but social contract is. You need to have enough faith that your neighbor will accept the currency to accept it yourself.
Cryptocurrencies have the advantage that they can be spent worldwide, instantaneously, with little friction, while most commodities require that you be physically present to exchange them. They're also significantly easier to store and more resistant to garden-variety theft, as long as they're secured by passphrases. But they exist in the uncanny valley of requiring electricity and Internet. It is fairly unlikely that the government collapses and yet you still retain always-on electricity and Internet. What will you use to pay the electric company, and how do you enforce the contract that they keep providing you power?
There's perhaps an interesting role for a digital cryptocurrency that does not require always-on connectivity, eg. something that can be carried over SneakerNet for local transactions, and then automatically syncs up with the global system when the community regains Internet connectivity. In actual conflict zones today, people seem to get intermittent electrical & Internet connectivity, eg. the electricity will come on for an hour a day with rolling blackouts, and then you try to get everything charged in that one hour. And there are enough solar installations out there that several communities are likely to retain significant power even in the event of a societal collapse. But current crypto's consensus mechanisms aren't built for intermittent connectivity: you'd need to build and design something that is eventually consistent, where a weeks-long fork does not result in two competing cryptocurrencies.
ignoramous 2 hours ago
> It speaks a lot to the power of financial incentives
Also, to the power of modern-day cryptography that rubber-hose and evil maid (backdoors) are the only viable (even if expensive) alternatives.
> the government disappears, there are really only two fundamental technologies needed to reboot everything: money and contracts
Both of which require "governance", but post-collapse, it may be of form that may not benefit the collective.
ChrisMarshallNY an hour ago
Sir Terry predicted this, in his C. M. O. T. Dibbler character[0].
I was just thinking about click fraud, and how I'll bet that a significant number of clicks on sites are now being driven by simple (they don't need to be too complicated) LLMs.
[0] https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Cut-Me-Own-Throat_Dibbler
mmooss 2 hours ago
> Now basically: every single attack that's been described as "theoretical" or "far-fetched" or "only existing in the mind of a paranoid person" did actually happen.
It's predictable: The ROI of attacking cryptocurrencies in this manner is high enough to make expensive attacks worthwhile. It doesn't make other expensive attacks on typical end-users worthwhile, and they remain far-fetched.
red_admiral 2 hours ago
After the Hezbullah pagers incident, the basic assumption has to be that every possible supply chain attack you can think of is realistic.
dist-epoch 2 hours ago
Multiple crypto-experts said that the safest crypto wallet is a recent iPhone in airplane mode which is only used for this purpose. Because it's much harder to implant that your average hardware crypto wallet.
bix6 2 hours ago
Why is it harder to implant?
Wololooo 2 hours ago
I'm going to guess it's a number's game, you might be able to do it with an iPhone but it's not guaranteed to go to a crypto user, whereas the other one is a bespoke system for the purpose.
tenuousemphasis 2 hours ago
I presume because iPhones have a secure TPM and nobody is targeting them for crypto supply chain attacks.
bri3d 2 hours ago
The hardware is much more sophisticated, miniaturized, and high-speed, and the supply chain is much more generic; a Ledger is a really primitive piece of hardware with a simple display interface and a ton of empty space inside it. An iPhone has no wasted space and extremely high-speed onboard buses that would be hard to sniff. Additionally, with Ledger, you know that every customer is going to be using the device to access crypto, so it's an easy target nearer the head of the supply chain. With an iPhone, you have no idea what end-user to target the implant against.
Gigachad an hour ago
You can walk in to an official Apple store and buy an iphone direct almost anywhere in the world. Crypto thieves would have to have compromised the entirety of Apple's supply chain and found space inside the iphone to fit a whole spy chip (of which there is basically none).
bondarchuk 29 minutes ago
Or just a single apple store sales employee...
aftbit 2 hours ago
On the other hand, the attack surface of an iPhone is huge compared to a dedicated hardware wallet, and it's hard to keep it in airplane mode and actually transact your coins.
dist-epoch 9 minutes ago
You can use QR codes or USB sticks to sign offline transactions, same as with a hardware wallet.
lern_too_spel an hour ago
"crypto-experts"
teiferer 40 minutes ago
How about if you build your own airgapped hw wallet? There should be plenty folks here who would be capable of doing so. (Doesn't even have to be the most hardened and audited implementation ever since you won't release this to anybody.) This makes you vulnerable to purely very targetted attacks.
As long as the cost of sucha single-target attack isn't substantially below its potential upside, you should be safe.
Otoh, it's only meaningful if you have more than just toy assets in there.
There should be a range between those two though that would contain lots of folks comfortably.
dist-epoch 11 minutes ago
> How about if you build your own airgapped hw wallet?
Also known as buying a laptop, removing the WiFi card, and putting stock Ubuntu on it.
Yeah, the problem with "crypto hardware wallets" is the same as the problem with "secure phones for drug dealers" - they are an extremely juicy targets, you KNOW that any user of them is your target.
gblargg 2 hours ago
I don't get hardware wallets that have you enter the key on another device. Or don't show the transaction on the hardware device's screen, with every destination and amount, with a button to confirm on the device. Or trusting a wallet to generate a random seed. Or not using the most entropy possible (e.g. 24-word seed). Anything less is dropping the ball.
0xbadcafebee an hour ago
> So the secure element ain't tampered with.
Back in the day, RSA SecurID hardware tokens were completely physically sealed, with no room for a backdoor. Tampering with them in any ways destroys them or makes it physically obvious. That's a physically secure design. This Ledger thing looks more like a consumer toy.
wahern an hour ago
Not to contradict your point, but in 2011 RSA's SecurID backend servers were hacked. TOTPs require shared secrets, and their server had all the secrets to the SecurID keyfobs they managed. Security is hard.
mgfist an hour ago
This is a big part of my problem with crypto and why I'm bearish on it breaking through to normies. Traditional financial institutions just seem so much safer all in all, not to mention having far better UX.
bluGill 28 minutes ago
The big thing traditional institutions give you is logs of everything. Sure if I get your account number I can take all your money - but there are traces of that and so it is easy to arrest me after the fact.
Don't give out your account numbers, there will be a lot of hassle should an evil person get it. However you have a reasonable change of getting your money back in a couple years. (this is also why you get warning about some countries - a few will not cooperate with traces and so the money is lost)
27183 8 minutes ago
There's also the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (in the US).
bri3d an hour ago
> this is incredible stuff...
Is it? The theory and even the implementation is literally a gas station credit card skimmer for crypto. I do agree that anyone dismissing attacks on Ledger was foolish, but mostly because Ledger is an obviously low-quality product on even a cursory inspection, not because we need to become even more paranoid conspiracy theorists.
neoncontrails 35 minutes ago
Would love to hear people's thoughts on this excerpt from the Epstein files in light of these disclosures:
--------------
From: Vincenzo lozzo
Sent: Monday, July 2, 2018 8:04 AM
Subject: Ledger wallet warning
Attachments: image1jpeg; Untitled attachment 00284.txt
In case you hold any coins in it, please don't spread this as they h=ven't released any of the information yet.
As for what is worth, the other wallets seem just as bad
--------------
Links:
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02501...
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02507...
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA008603...
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02505...
whitepoplar 35 minutes ago
I don't own any crypto, but if I did, I'd probably choose to use a multisig setup with 2+ signers, including at least one (regularly pentested) software wallet.
littlecranky67 25 minutes ago
It depends what you do with your coins. Hardware wallets are meant to be used for people that frequently trade and need to sign transactions.
I always thought it is stupid to HODL using a hardware wallet. For HODLing, just get a random computer (no mailorder) and run debian13 with electrum (it is in the official repo, not an external package hence protected by standard debian safeties). Once you generated you keys, back them up and either wipe the machine, or at least airgap it.
Extra bonus: Raspberry pi 5 runs debian 13 out of the box.
cowlevel 11 hours ago
Not mentioned in article: MediaMarkt, the German equivalent of Best Buy, was selling these compromised devices on store shelves in every city in Germany.
blensor 11 hours ago
I wonder what the liabilities are for that
drob518 10 hours ago
Not much unless you can show that they knew about it. Otherwise, they are just as much a victim.
V__ 10 hours ago
They are liable. In Germany the seller of a product is responsible not the producer.
dylan604 2 hours ago
I'd assume a company like that would have insurance for this. They'd be able to reimburse the customer knowing they'd get paid back from an insurance claim. That is, if they are actually insured for these kinds of losses.
A few years ago, the Canon camera battery supply chain was intermingled with knock offs. The seller I bought from was exchanging for legit batteries or reimbursement when a customer made a claim.
mikeryan 10 hours ago
Selling Ledger wallets or compromised Ledger wallets? My understanding was a reputable reseller (Cryptobilis) was bought and then the wallets were modified via the reseller chain. This isn’t on Ledger it’s a (literal) supply chain attack. Unless MediaMarkt was buying via the reseller?
veganmosfet 10 hours ago
according to this guy, compromised (https://x.com/0xJohannes_/status/2109240472933671125). Interestingly, Mediamarkt removed the device from their shop quickly after (https://www.mediamarkt.de/de/product/_ledger-sas-nano-s-plus... now 404).
jeremyjh 10 hours ago
They would remove them regardless of known compromise, because they have no way to verify it in-house and it’s the simplest PR and legal strategy.
chinathrow 10 hours ago
> This isn’t on Ledger it’s a (literal) supply chain attack.
Supply chain attack?
"Can't do shit, not my problem."
If it was that easy to shed responsibility.
mikeryan 9 hours ago
TBF that characterization was mine. It’s not been Ledger’s response AFAIK.
refulgentis 3 hours ago
I don't know coin stuff, but if top comment's...
"We're talking here about a tiny eSIM implant and a little CPU doing OCR on the fonts appearing on the hardware wallet's screen to read the secrets during set up. So the secure element ain't tampered with."
...is accurate...it's one of the rare times I'd agree there's nothing they can do. And I was all prepared to storm in here saying "convenient excuse!"
charcircuit 2 hours ago
>there's nothing they can do
The device should have bricked itself after someone opened it up to put hidden stuff inside. Also showing the key phrase to the user instead of keeping it secret to the secure element is a questionable decision.
infinite_spin 2 hours ago
people do need the option to repair devices, especially when they contain valuable information, so I don't see an automatic bricking to be a reasonable solution
charcircuit an hour ago
I'd rather have to buy another wallet than have to worry that someone is able to drain it.
chinathrow an hour ago
If you can't back up your keys, then what?
whaleofatw2022 an hour ago
There's a medium. Something ironically close to apple's 'non fully approved and supply chained repair' thing (especially when we consider the case of a screen that could be OCRing data and tossing it out later).
'You have unexpected components. You may want to have your device inspected or risking compromise of x/y/z. Should we continue or lock it down'?
seviu an hour ago
I would love to know if I can use one of this to get unlimited data worldwide.
Jokes aside, keystone wallets are air gapped. And not air gapped but awesome the lesser known but imo best of all, gridplus lattice1.
Heck, even a trezor, despite their mail provider being hacked, is better.
I, however, dont endorse the iPhone idea.
Just don’t buy ledger, terrible company. Many of my friends are getting endless spam because of them. The key backup is a disaster after they promised it was not possible to retrieve it. Their software stack is closed source.
This is imo the last nail in the coffin for them. They should refund all the money lost, and issue a worldwide recall.
Lots to hate about them.
superze 8 hours ago
Why doesn't it surprise me that the shittiest company Media Markt is somehow involved in this. These guys are about to close shop anyway, rest in piss Mediamarkt.
megous 11 hours ago
The technique is so coool. I mean taping the screen output on the way to the display to get around having to hack the secure element. :)
grishka 11 hours ago
I had a similar idea to bypass DRM for a while. Some kind of board that goes between the display panel driver and whatever sends it the signal, and outputs something you can capture, e.g. DVI or unencrypted HDMI. Not sure how practical it is.
exe34 11 hours ago
0cf8612b2e1e 2 hours ago
HDMI 1.4 has been leaked and there are devices which will force communication to this protocol level.
fpgaminer an hour ago
In the past (circa a few years ago) the connection between the main board for a display and the glass driver board would be a ribbon cable, LVDS signalling. Very straightforward and typically not soldered. There'd be a ribbon cable connector. So yeah, you could just put a board between easily. And there are LVDS to H264/H265 chips already.
But as the other comment points out, older HDCP is broken wide open so ... easier to just use that. Plenty HDCP strippers on the market.
snypher 5 hours ago
Great example of a digital 'analog hole'; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole
jacquesm 12 hours ago
The link you want:
https://grandideastudio.com/portfolio/security/ledger-hardwa...
They should have posted the weight with and without the device in it.
Also: never leave empty space in a hardware key, pot the whole thing in epoxy.
flibble 12 hours ago
I heard they reduced the battery size to make space for their chip.
jacquesm 12 hours ago
Yes, hence the potting. You'd have to figure out a way to open the device without breaking it.
londons_explore 12 hours ago
When there are millions of dollars to be stolen, someone can figure out how to remove the potting.
If need be, just grind and cut till you are back to the one silicon wafer that contains crypto keys, then rebuild the whole lot from scratch, add your evil parts, then re-pot it.
j-bos 11 hours ago
millions out of thousands of wallets. Epoxy potting raises the lottery ticket and odds of getting caught by a great deal.
curiousObject 11 hours ago
This story is a case of someone tampering with devices in the supply chain, before the user first receives them.
What you’re describing is a different thing. It’s an “evil maid” attack, when you tamper with a wallet that is already set up by the user. Also, it would be ultra difficult and expensive.
What you’re saying is possible. But:
It would probably be cheaper to build a total fake Ledger Wallet, then just replace the new real wallet and deliver a fake with a weak entropy generator. Any case, that’s not what has happened this time.
londons_explore 7 hours ago
The legit wallets have an online way to verify they are genuine by cryptographic means. A totally new fake couldn't do that.
curiousObject 6 hours ago
Thanks. I believe you’re right a totally fake copy couldn’t verify. So that idea was wrong.
(The MITM supply chain attack which has happened succeeds because it preserves the original secure hardware but intercepts the secret data at the display interface. But a low-effort mimic of the entire device like I suggested? That wouldn’t work).
lightedman 2 hours ago
Ledger provides a 'Genuine Check' mechanism to determine the authenticity of the device; however, it explicitly warns that it cannot detect added implants when the device's original Secure Element remains intact.
And as this workaround leaves the original Secure Element intact, good luck detecting the supply chain attack.
odo1242 an hour ago
I think that’s where the epoxy from earlier in this comment chain is supposed to come in.
jacquesm 11 hours ago
That would work on an already configured wallet that you stole but the skill level required is orders of magnitude higher than what's on display here. I know all of the theory on that one but I would probably not be able to pull that off.
The best I've done is to modify a potted chip by very careful thermal imaging to figure out where the part was that blocked the feature I wanted to unlock (market segmentation) and then drill through the case to a depth just higher than the chip. You'd have definitely been able to spot the difference. This was at the millimeter level. Recently there was a post about a group doing this at the chip level, which I thought was extremely impressive, and again, even with the recipe out there duplicating it would still be very hard.
bcraven 10 hours ago
Xbox Kamikaze hack (How a drill defeated the Xbox 360’s console security)
https://www.xda-developers.com/how-drill-defeated-the-xbox-3...
jacquesm 10 hours ago
Hah! Very similar, they even made a jig like I did.
justinclift 9 hours ago
> The best I've done is to modify a potted chip by very careful thermal imaging to figure out where the part was that blocked the feature I wanted to unlock (market segmentation) and then drill through the case to a depth just higher than the chip.
Sounds like a good approach when you only have a single (or just a few) of the devices so you need to be careful.
With hardware wallets (aka substantial incentive), then the attackers could order a bunch of them for sacrificial zero-ing in the exact places to drill with a CNC/microscope/etc.
jacquesm 8 hours ago
> Sounds like a good approach when you only have a single (or just a few) of the devices so you need to be careful.
Yes, initially I had just the one. But once I had it figured out there were lots of other people that wanted their device 'improved' so that jig got used plenty of times. Even so working on other people's hardware always felt very scary, especially poking around with a drill in a sensitive piece of hardware. Even so, they all worked, it was a neat little trick.
Liftyee 2 hours ago
Market segmentation?! What device is high quality enough to be potted but still has the same hardware modified by jumpers across models?
m4rtink 10 hours ago
Well, still a safer reason for clandestinely reducing the size of a battery in a mobile device many people carry around close to their body.
samlinnfer 12 hours ago
This one too (pardon the AI slop): https://www.tibane.net/research/ledger-nano-x-implant
jacquesm 12 hours ago
Ah good one, more useful info in that one. That kapton circuit might be traceable to whoever ordered it.
curiousObject 12 hours ago
And the Vodafone NL SIM could also offer some leads
jacquesm 12 hours ago
I have some friends there, I will ping them.
hocuspocus 9 hours ago
Vodafone NL data only SIMs are very common for IoT connectivity when devices need to roam in Europe, such as in connected cars.
I'd assume it's not a coincidence and fraudsters made sure there's no easy way to trace anything back from the SIMs.
jacquesm 9 hours ago
Yes, this is quite true. Virtual providers are quite easy to set up that way but the amount of KYC for this kind of service is substantial. Even so, these SIMs/eSIMs have turned up in all kinds of bad places such as SIM farms.
theamk 8 hours ago
This is May version. If you look at the twitter thread, the October version is different and looks much more "stock"
curiousObject 6 hours ago
These recent teardowns of compromised Ledger wallets are frightening. Because the infiltration of hardware looks very pro. Mass production and standardized parts added.
Even weight difference might not be obvious. He compared weights for one Ledger product but the small variations in weight among genuine devices made comparisons not clear.
Possibly only X-ray would uncover the fake without cracking the case?
https://youtube.com/@MagicalTux
(Warning - MagicalTux is Tibanne or Mark Karpeles. He has a “complicated” legal history, but this looks legit)
lxgr 11 hours ago
Is that safe for devices containing a lithium battery?
jacquesm 11 hours ago
Good question: the battery here doesn't look like it had any room for expansion so it wouldn't be worse per se. But normally you want a little bit of room around a battery, I guess a thin foam liner would allow for that and would still allow you to pot the whole thing.
lxgr 9 hours ago
Worst case, a bloating battery cracking open a plastic enclosure or being able to vent gas through the gaps in one would be preferable too, right?
jacquesm 9 hours ago
Absolutely and it is why I hate these little pouch cells in wearables. Phones, headphones, in-ear pods, sports gear, toys (which kids take to bed), they're absolutely everywhere and if you look at the way they are usually mounted it is a small miracle there aren't more issues. Powerbanks in particular are a pretty serious hazard.
varispeed 11 hours ago
They could x-ray it, carve out epoxy with nothing inside, put the logger, apply epoxy.
jacquesm 9 hours ago
Not that easy. The potting epoxies made for this purpose are nothing like your regular epoxies. They're pricey and when you try to break them you are very likely to tear the parts right off the board. This is the brand I have used in the past:
https://www.masterbond.com/techtips/tamper-resistant-potting...
The devices we made were put in places where there was a significant risk of tampering and to the best of my knowledge nobody ever managed to break the epoxy bond to the point that the circuit was still functional. But as I wrote above: not cheap.
InsidiousWombat 11 hours ago
Take off the case, put your own entire module in, put the case back in. Epoxy doesn't solve much.
...frankly, selling one as DIY kit have highest chance for tamper resistance. Tho pretty untenable with small SMD components sadly
theamk 8 hours ago
No, this is May version. If you look at the twitter thread, the October version is different and looks much more "stock"
(sadly I have not found nice website with newer version photos yet)
ArtTimeInvestor a day ago
Hardware wallets are not a solution to self-custody.
If one would make a list of things that can go wrong, starting from the supply chain that delivers parts to the manufacturer, malicious employees at the manufacturer, mistakes the manufacturer can make, attacks on the delivery chain from the manufacturer to the user, to mistakes the user can make creating, using and storing their keys - the list would contain hundreds of points.
chinathrow a day ago
But freedom.
Seriously, that's why we have banks, still.
iammrpayments a day ago
Good luck trying send money abroad or dealing with a sudden unexplained account shutdown.
chinathrow a day ago
I have had no problem sending or receiving money abroad, thank you.
theplumber a day ago
yet
Dah00n a day ago
We are not all living in America, yet.
ameliaquining a day ago
That's not really relevant; the U.S. government has enough leverage over the global (fiat) financial system that they can cause any account in any First World country to be shut down.
The actual reason to discount this is that account shutdowns are flashy rare events that reliably summon HN outrage, and so the kind of person who posts here overweights how likely they are, at least for people not on the margins of society. (If that weren't the case, the system wouldn't work and normal people wouldn't use it.)
theplumber a day ago
Well as far as I know banks in Europe (UK included) already ask you a lot of questions when you withdraw your money(I.e cash) or even when you wire various amounts( unless you have a good bank manager). My bank manager in Europe just told me straight that I don’t need to explain him anything but he has to call me anyway because of the bank policy(I.e to tick the boxes).
Next is a hold on your suspicious transaction, request additional documents for your own money, basically a lot of AML and KYC before you can use what’s yours.
I understand the reason why they do this but it feels to me you are no longer in control of your money/property and somehow they fail to catch people loading billions from shady sources so I would rather not keep my money in a bank (at least not a retail bank) if I had a sensible option.
Most people don’t care about this until they get trapped just like most people are /were OK with Paypal and other junk services.
artisinal an hour ago
About one in five international money transfers fail for me. EU to EU countries. SEPA isn’t bulletproof. Outside office hours I have an even higher failure rate.
Ironically the failure rate when I use the American Visa or MasterCard is maybe 5%.
akoboldfrying a day ago
Yes, but this threat analysis also holds for laptops and phones.
What do you use to access your bank account online? I use my laptop, or my phone.
kasey_junk a day ago
If your money is stolen from a bank account via fraud you have recourse to get it back, and it’s pretty straightforward to do in most cases.
SXX a day ago
Very often this is not the case. Debit / credit cards payments are quite reversible, but once a person send $100,000 or even $10,000 to a scammer it can be quite hard to recover.
lmz a day ago
Even banks find it hard to recover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery
nkrisc a day ago
Because the scammers are instructing victims to use methods that are difficult or impossible to reverse, such as gift cards or cryptocurrency.
rwmj a day ago
Don't buy gift cards and send them to random people would be a good rule to live by.
sfn42 a day ago
Yeah, "everyone" knows that. Except the world har an incredible amount of people who fall for these kinds of scams. And there are less obvious scams around.
I almost fell for a strange scam a while ago. A Steam user by the same name as one of my existing steam friends added me. I assumed it was his second account and accepted. A few days later, he messages me, asking me to participate in a DOTA2 tournament. I had previously played DOTA2 with this person, he spoke to me in our shared native language which is not English and everything seemed in order. I said I haven't played DOTA2 in years so I'm beyond rusty, he said I don't have to play, they just need me to register so they have a full team for the signups and then they'll find someone else to play before the tournament starts. Sent me a link to a website requiring a signup and I can't remember what it was now but there was something about the signup that irked me. Maybe it was just creating a account, maybe it required a credit card or something I can't remember but I ended up looking at my steam friends list and noticed both the accounts were online. So I sent a message to the other account asking if this is them, he said no and then I noticed the same scammer had added another mutual friend so I messaged them too warning them about it.
That's the closest I've been to getting scammed that I can recall. I'm not sure what the scammer would gain from my signing up but I'm sure they had some kind of profit angle.
Pannoniae 2 hours ago
its a fake steam login! theyll phish you for your login and login into your account, messaging your friends...
nkrisc a day ago
And yet people still do it.
kasey_junk a day ago
Caused by an account take over? This is letter of the law stuff and something bank (and other financial firms) employees receive specific training on. The customers loss is capped and their bank is on the hook.
For inter-bank transactions involving a scam that causes the customer to “voluntarily” send money it depends on the rail. But US ACH rules cover reversals due to fraud and have pretty substantial rules about it.
SXX a day ago
All the countries have rules about it. Except if your credentials been compromised it can take weeks before you find out that money gone from your account.
Gigachad a day ago
Usually how it goes is if someone hacks your account or steals credit card info. You get refunded. If a scammer convinces you to willingly send the money, you’re out of luck.
iammrpayments a day ago
The truth is that banks often have pretty bad security and customer service, but the risk of getting caught after stealing crypto is virtually zero when compared to scamming someone’s bank account balance.
embedding-shape a day ago
> Hardware wallets are not a solution to self-custody.
Nothing in this world tends to be "the solution", everything has tradeoffs.
Say you want to do self-custody, what is then the best option? "Don't do self-custody" obviously isn't the solution, as the core use case here is self-custody, so what in your opinion is a better way, than hardware wallets?
If there is nothing better today than hardware wallets, then for now, they are "one of the better solutions" for how to do self-custody, even with the current tradeoffs. But again, I'm eager to hear what the alternatives are.
ArtTimeInvestor a day ago
There is no solution yet.
From a bird's-eye perspective, 3 things are needed: Create a key, derive an address from the key, store the key.
Creating a key safely is possible with dice. You would probably create a seed phrase instead of a key directly, but for this discussion it is the same.
Deriving an address from the key is hard and I have not yet seen a good protocol on how to do it. I have read through a bunch of descriptions of how people do it and they are all weak and brittle. The most popular seems to be "I order a hardware wallet and follow the instructions that come with it". But even people who put a lot of thought into it come up with weak and brittle approaches. I would think there is a way to do it safely. But I have never seen a description of one yet. It might involve multiple computers, multiple software implementations and a hell of a lot of work to create a multisig that is not prone to a single attack vector.
Storing the key is probably the hardest. The most popular way seems to be to store it in a drawer or a safe. So now those coins are just as safe as a piece of gold would be. Or they use a multisig and store the keys in multiple locations. Quite painful. As you have the ongoing problem of keeping those locations accessible and safe at the same time.
thinkmassive a day ago
How is multisig "quite painful" in your opinion?
ifwinterco 3 hours ago
Say you've done everything right and used 3 coldcards spread across 3 geographic locations using 2of3 multisig.
You're feeling pretty proud of yourself, your coins are super safe.
Then it turns out the RNG in the coldcard mk2 was badly/maliciously implemented and is completely insecure. You need to move your coins right now.
You can probably see the issue
aftbit 2 hours ago
You'd probably want to use diversity for this - do 2of3 multisig with a Coldcard, a Ledger, and a Trezor.
ifwinterco 13 minutes ago
Yes, but the complexity of the setup (which is already way too much for any non-cypherpunk normies) is starting to get kind of ridiculous.
I am still pro crypto and fascinated by the technology but we have to admit the original cypherpunk vision was unfortunately never going to work, we're going to end up with something else
embedding-shape 12 hours ago
> There is no solution yet.
Again, "best solution we have available" for self-custody is hardware wallets, so we're back to square one.
Imagine if I tried to discuss and argue about things like this on a TypeScript submission? "No, this won't actually solve the problems of TS" I say, "What is the solution then?" someone asks me and I reply "There is no real solutions to those problems, just use Clojure, problems avoided!", completely missing the point.
nkrisc a day ago
Then can you give an example of what you would consider a solution, whether hypothetical or real?
mattmaroon a day ago
Using the banking system instead of crypto.
ArtTimeInvestor a day ago
There is none yet.
If there was one, someone would write down the steps necessary and put them on the internet. But I have never seen a sound description of how to self-custody Bitcoin in a safe way.
The hardest part seems to not even be the one that currently creates all those problems - the hardware and software used. The hardest part is storing the key (for example a seed phrase). If anyone says they know a way to safely store Bitcoin, my first question is: How do you store the key?
skinfaxi a day ago
Where do you store your bank password? Couldn't the same be used for a seed phrase?
rspeele 2 hours ago
The sensitivity of my bank password is much lower than a seed phrase because most bank transactions can be reversed as long as I notice them in time and prove my identity to my bank.
With bitcoin nothing is reversible so every step of the process is a huge security risk where you can fall off a cliff and experience financial permadeath of "your" crypto, assuming a sufficiently motivated attacker.
everyday7732 a day ago
remember it? Write it down somewhere hidden if you have to.
floss_silicate 2 hours ago
There are a few out there, but this is probably the best: https://github.com/bowlarbear/yeti-2.0
whywhywhywhy a day ago
Use a device that’s mass produced enough it can’t be targeted e.g a MacBook, then keep it airgapped and don’t do normal computing on it.
QuadmasterXLII a day ago
airgapped pre crypto devices are extra safe: break out the ti82! don’t buy a ti82 for this purpose, it has to be one you had in your closet. If a blog post describes how to code it in TiBasic then affiliate links a calculator in ebay, well…
Gigachad a day ago
Hardware wallets are air-gapped. The issue here was a distributor got acquired and then snuck a chip in that could read the spi link between the microcontroller and the screen. The chip had its own cellular modem and could send the passphrase that was shown on the screen to the attackers.
LoganDark a day ago
Nobody said hardware wallets aren't air-gapped. They said take something normal and usual enough not to be an attractive target for bespoke crypto stealers, and then airgap that to make your wallet.
ameliaquining a day ago
The post you're replying to is arguing that it wouldn't be feasible to do that with a MacBook (at least if you buy it off the shelf at Best Buy).
wongarsu a day ago
If you sell a device specifically for storing large amounts of liquid assets, that puts a huge target on that device. You are basically asking for supply chain attacks
An ordinary MacBook does not have that issue. If you are a high-value target, you can further decrease your risk profile by buying it from a random physical store, further preventing targeted attacks.
alwa a day ago
Boy that was a slog, to dig deep enough through the slop to find the technical details…
In retrospect @gigachad’s summary is worth as much as both articles combined, but for the Clauded technical source (with pictures!) that Ledger’s Claude-release refers to: https://www.tibane.net/research/ledger-nano-x-implant
throwawayfifo an hour ago
>Hardware wallets are air-gapped.
The ones with hidden eSIMs aren't!
fsflover an hour ago
Qubes OS can be more secure than airgapping in some cases: https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/introduction/faq.html#how...
fps-hero a day ago
Banks and payment providers (Visa Mastercard AMX) provide services beyond simply a store of wealth and a mechanism to transfer it.
Actually 2FA, hardware biometrics, behaviour based fraud prevention and personal confirmation of suspicious transactions. If you’re using credit they can refund fraudulent transactions, and there is the chargeback mechanism. This is probably banking system dependent, but in AUS there is a refund mechanism for mistaken/fraudulent traditional bank transactions.
BTC has effectively none of the safety net, and humans are fallible. We need the safety net. It’s the hugest barrier to adoption. Exchanges do a far better job of managing the risks than trusting your wealth to a hardware wallet.
ameliaquining a day ago
The safety net makes you less secure against the U.S. government, but more secure against everyone else. That's the right choice for almost all users, but I still think it's at least kind of good that people have a choice.
motionlessveloc a day ago
You sure about that last sentence?
fps-hero a day ago
I’m not saying they are perfect, but on aggregate they are better than hardware wallets. Legally they will be responsible if your money is lost. They are about as close as you can get to the type of legal assurances provided by a bank.
fps-hero a day ago
Anacdote, I have a friend who is a locksmith. I needed his services one day, gave him a call, and it turned out his day job had evolved since I last talked to him 5 years ago.
Basically, he was now just a safe cracker. He is a a locksmith, but 100% of his full time hours are cracking safes. He didn’t even carry around the stuff in his van to repin a lock. He gave me mates rates but the shop had to do it.
This man was attending multiple callouts, per day, to crack into a safe. Because of, you guessed it, human fallibility.
In a city with with millions of people, basically a hundreds of people needed a single locksmiths service because they had locked themselves out of there own “personal store of wealth”.
I’ve heard zero such examples through traditional banking, with the exception of stolen cards.
miki123211 a day ago
In financial systems with a basis in law, no transaction is ever final. It doesn't matter what the protocol says or what the technology is capable of, if the judge says that the transaction must be reversed, you get it reversed, even if that means delivering cash in briefcases or something like that.
In systems with a basis in technology, final means final. If the North Koreans take your money, your money is taken.
This piece from Patrick mcKenzie explains this well https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/the-900m-wire...
AnthonyMouse 2 hours ago
> In systems with a basis in technology, final means final. If the North Koreans take your money, your money is taken.
This seems obviously not true. If someone in New York steals your money then courts in New York can order them to give it back even if it's Bitcoin. If they don't comply then they get held in contempt until they do or the police seize their computer with the keys on it etc.
If the person who stole it is in North Korea then the courts with jurisdiction would be the ones in North Korea, which may not be to your advantage, but how is it any different from what happens after the money was transferred to a bank in North Korea? Or, for that matter, what happens if someone in North Korea has the stolen money deposited into a US account and then spends it before you get around to reversing the transaction?
The problem isn't what kind of technology you use, it's that someone can transfer stolen assets into a jurisdiction that won't help you get them back. Regardless of what payment system you use, they can get the same effect by using the stolen money to buy gold bullion or similar and have it shipped to them in their jurisdiction, and once it crosses the border they're not giving it back.
rlpb 2 hours ago
> if the judge says that the transaction must be reversed, you get it reversed, even if that means delivering cash in briefcases or something like that
So if I pay cash for something, I can get it back if a judge orders the counterparty to do so.
Why is cryptocurrency not the same? Can I not go to a court and get an order, exactly the same?
Of course I may not know the counterparty's identity or they may be in a hostile jurisdiction, but how is that different to cash that has escaped my jurisdiction?
JumpCrisscross an hour ago
> If the North Koreans take your money, your money is taken
If you wire your money to North Korea, forget about it for a week, and then ask a court to intervene you aren’t getting your funds back.
kasey_junk 43 minutes ago
Are there any American banks that will let you wire money to North Korea?
JumpCrisscross 20 minutes ago
No. But pretty much any American bank will let you wire to a new Chinese or Singaporean account that sweeps funds every evening to other jurisdiction.
lrvick a day ago
I have worked for and/or audited the majority of exchanges, that mostly white-label a much smaller number of players.
I have yet to see a single one, not one, that had a system of custody that did not allow any one of hundreds of people, most not even employees, to walk away with all of the funds.
There are no standards for security that apply to crypto custodians and the mostly fail to do the bare minimums.
If you use even a top ten custodian, operate under the assumption that the funds are in multi billion dollar plaintext wallets sitting on AWS servers the whole team has ssh access to from the same laptops they "npm install" random shit to all day.
Honestly if you do not feel confident custodying crypto yourself, you should probably not own any.
user43928 2 hours ago
And if you do feel confident, you probably shouldn't own crypto either.
Even if you are not hacked, or otherwise lose access to the funds, they are not unlikely to become worthless simply due to the system with the stable coins collapsing.
The liquidity can easily disappear, much more so than with Fiat currency or other assets linked to real economies.
You cannot protect yourself from being scammed in that way, even if you do hold on to your keys.
littlecranky67 a day ago
get a brand new, cheap laptop or machine (even a raspberry pi works) that you randomly pickup at the store (no delivery order). Install debian 13, install electrum, airgap the device, reboot and generate 1-of-2 your wallet keys.
The wipe the device, use any non-debian other linux (or BSD) to generated the 2-of-2 wallet key.
0cf8612b2e1e 2 hours ago
Why would you ever connect it to the internet? Air gap forever. Physically rip out the radio, only load software by CD (ideally not through a USB interface).
notyourwork a day ago
The existing financial system which provides protection to consumers. Crypto doesn’t solve the problem the general public assumes it does and hype has inflated its value dramatically.
pants2 a day ago
MPC or multi-sig is a pretty good solution, you can require a 2/3 sign off from different custody solutions (ie. a hardware, desktop, and mobile wallet)
Aurornis 3 hours ago
> Hardware wallets are not a solution to self-custody.
Look back as recently as last year and hardware wallets were held up as the recommended way to do self-custody all over.
Whenever I brought up the issue of losing coins due to hacks or bugs, I was told that hardware wallets had solved this problem.
tenuousemphasis 2 hours ago
There have been more hacks, bugs, and coins lost from software or custodial wallets than ever have and likely ever will be lost from hardware wallets.
0cf8612b2e1e 2 hours ago
Do passkeys next.
JumpCrisscross an hour ago
Passkeys don’t gate immutable financial transactions. (Pretty much everything you do in a bank’s website is reversible during the day to a few days out.)
chinathrow a day ago
Exhibit #9387434 for reasons to stay out of crypto.
shingoshoji an hour ago
These guys had the audacity to slap a label on their box:
"See how there's no security sticker? That's because our hardware is soooo secure"
Everyone at ledger has made absolute fools out of themselves.
klinch 13 hours ago
Man, I wish there were some pictures. I didn’t even know that there are LTE modems that small.
TacticalCoder 12 hours ago
There are pictures online. And for an unexplainable reason it is the person behind the biggest Bitcoin exchange SNAFU of all times (where hackers stole something like 800 000 Bitcoins), Mark Karpeles of "Mt. Gox" (who did jail time btw), who was the first to post them:
Apparently the hacker did remove the battery and replace it with a smaller one, leaving enough room for the tiny eSIM/LTE modem / OCR chip that did recognition of the secret on screen.
kotaKat 12 hours ago
https://www.tibane.net/research/ledger-nano-x-implant
They're here. It's wild.
Aboutplants 12 hours ago
What incredible engineering
CamperBob2 2 hours ago
It's a great hack. I wonder why they didn't just spin a new board and transplant the secure-enclave chip to it.
I guess the sweatshop workers would then need to be trained in reballing BGAs if they did that.
sdcfgy 2 hours ago
I want to read that but my slop detector went off. Instant disinterest.
Give me a shitty html4 page with the text ffs.
arm32 2 hours ago
It's definitely AI-written, annoying as fuck god damn it, but the photos are good and the descriptions of the boards, are at least at cursory glance, pretty accurate.
tl;dr Implant is just a little cell phone that does OCR of the hardware wallet's screen during setup to steal the recovery phrases. The implant's design has improved notably three different times before landing on a pretty darn sleek spot-welded overlay that is laminated flat onto the host.
keritech 11 hours ago
Funny enough, EEVBlog posted a teardown video of one of those things today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JnHdr30v4g
x1watt an hour ago
This whole operation smells Israeli from the beginning to the end. First are these USB ledgers with modified hardware (guess who likes to do that on pagers and similar), then this happens in Germany, the country that never says "no" to the same specific group of people and finally they try exfiltrate the stolen funds with the favorite "private" coin of the same group of people, which in end is (again) proven to NOT be private at all.https://x.com/YFarmX/status/2108918564015006200
HN will never permit to look into the origin of this criminal action and normies will not even put that possibility on the table because they've been programmed against it. Let's play a game, this is a serious criminal act. I bet this will be quickly forgoten in about 3 weeks without anyone in Germany pointing fingers to the guilty party.
verteu 27 minutes ago
The crypto-theft angle seems more typical of China/NK/Russia to me. (China has some history of hardware supply-chain attacks). But without evidence we're simply speculating.
hector_vasquez 2 hours ago
I wonder the lengths smartphone vendors are going to prevent this kind of attack. I cannot imagine it is easy to completely validate hardware in such an elaborate supply chain. I shudder to think about the attack surface in something like a modern car.
tenuousemphasis an hour ago
It seems unlikely that smartphones would be targeted for such an attack because almost nobody stores large amounts of crypto on their smartphone. Those that do will likely get hacked more traditionally.
slim an hour ago
The attack is profitable because it's targeted. Every one of those devices contains crypto. Which is not the case for mobile phones.
Neywiny a day ago
My gut reaction is that a hardware implant would be too costly so there's no way they'd actually do that but I guess when you can steal $92M, anything is possible. They could even fab an esoteric chip and still make a profit.
Shank a day ago
PCBWay will make anything you send them for reasonable pricing. Custom boards etc are not at all hard to manufacture, and for the amount of money you can get, of course you can team up with someone. I think the most people overestimate the cost of bespoke PCB creation.
solyin a day ago
Dangerous things sells implantable chips.
Eg. https://dangerousthings.com/products/apex-flex?Antenna=Narro...
dannyw a day ago
Why do you think it's too costly? It's well known that there are divisions in DPRK that are focused on generating $ through crypto hacks and compromises.
We're dealing with reasonably sophisticated state actors here in this dark forest; not script kiddies.
Cheap $5 PCB + programmable small FPGA is a very viable route too for hardware implants; but even a microcontroller / ESP32/etc will probably do.
thinkmassive a day ago
> A technical account published by Tibane Labs described an arrangement involving a microcontroller, cellular communication hardware and connections to the screen’s internal data lines.
Cellular communications hardware seems very sophisticated and expensive compared to a simple microcontroller.
Neywiny a day ago
Other commentator covered it a bit but BOM cost is a negligible percentage
kotaKat a day ago
If you slide through and ignore the writing, the linked implant teardown is wild - https://www.tibane.net/research/ledger-nano-x-implant
They did, in fact, appear to mass-manufacture a custom-built flat flex implant with cellular (LTE-M!), eSIM, and everything that hid right inside the Ledger, sniffing the SPI reads to the display to read the recovery phrases it pukes out and send 'em over cellular to the ringleader.
It's an EXTREMELY well built implant. I'm impressed. Multiple revisions, even.
The money's too hot to not build shit like this and slip it into the stream. Even a few thousand in R&D netting a six figure ROI is worth it, getting millions is just the icing.
Freeaqingme a day ago
I'm guessing the best way to go about self custody these days is to have a multi sig wallet, based on multiple hardware wallets from different vendors.
scrlk a day ago
I wouldn't trust any of the hardware wallet vendors. Pretty much all of them have had customer data leaks, resulting in wrench attacks.
You're better off just having a dedicated laptop for crypto transactions.
sunshine-o a day ago
What always surprised me is there aren't many implementations of multisig for EVM based chains.
Actually the only one I know is the Gnosis Safe. Talk about creating a huge risk if it would have a problem.
wongarsu a day ago
Hardware wallets have a huge target on their back. They are great for convenience, but once you are using multiple for muli-sig you can have more security with less hassle with an airgapped old laptop or a hand-stamped piece of metal you keep in a safe
ForHackernews 2 hours ago
Don't forget to bury it under a cement birdbath in your back yard!
anvuong 2 hours ago
One would've thought that the display data bus would be encrypted/scrambled in such a device, or at least packaged in a way that makes this kind of attack destructive to the circuit board (chip-on-glass).
Amateur hour all around.
olalonde a day ago
I wonder if a epoxy/resin potting would solve this sort of attack. Or active tamper response that fries the board if someone tampers with the case.
swinglock 2 hours ago
It would make the tampering more expensive, but not too expensive given the 100 million dollar reward, while also making inspection of the device practically impossible for users.
If you can't get to the insides without breaking it, the only devices verified to likely be safe would be unusable too, so the product would in practice be even more unsafe.
If the user first inspects it and then glue it on their own, that would work, but it wouldn't solve this problem. Evil maid attack is something else and obviously harder at scale.
modeless 2 hours ago
Why are these things not potted in epoxy at the factory? Not that it would entirely prevent this attack but it could make it a lot harder to execute and hide.
theturtletalks an hour ago
I can guarantee that if this was open-source, someone or some system would’ve picked it up. I’m still amazed that one guy picked up the XZ Utils backdoor because it slowed down after an update.
karel-3d 12 hours ago
Not your factory, distributor, warehouses, fulfillment centers and entire supply chain, not your coins.
woadwarrior01 a day ago
Ledger has had three data leak incidents: once in 2020, a software supply chain attack in 2023 and another data leak in 2026. This latest one is the fourth.
Even if one were to ignore the latest incident, which arguably isn't their fault, the first three incidents make up a pretty bad security track record.
How a French (EU based) company is still in business after all of this, is an indicator of selective enforcement of EU privacy laws (GDPR, etc).
Slartie 10 hours ago
> the latest incident, which arguably isn't their fault
I'd not release them soo easily from their share of responsibility. Tamper-proof hardware is a thing, electronic funds transfer terminals for example already implement ways to detect or prevent physical intrusion into safety-relevant parts of the device. Would probably have cost a few cents in manufacturing to add countermeasures to physical modification into the Ledgers. The fact that there is not even the slightest attempt at securing the device against this kind of attacks is entirely on the manufacturer.
> How a French (EU based) company is still in business after all of this, is an indicator of selective enforcement of EU privacy laws (GDPR, etc).
Surely you can name a dozen of US companies that have been driven out of business by enforcement of EU privacy laws. But I'd be glad if you'd at least name a single one!
chinathrow 10 hours ago
I wonder why they only managed to steal 100M so far. Like with the order of effort needed, why haven't they waited for the really big fish to unlock their ledger?
agos 9 hours ago
because the longer they wait, the higher the chance of being discovered before they're able to steal anything. I'm sure there's some game theory about this
TheBozzCL an hour ago
TBH, this just sounds to me like the crypto industry is discovering, yet again, why the banking and credit card industry have all this red tape and supply chain security.
Like sure, they're not fully immune... But at least I can call my bank and show them that I didn't suddenly fly from New Mexico to Florida to buy $200 in gift cards from a gas station in the middle of nowhere.
Crypto MUST deal with fraud and hacking if they want to become reliable. At that point, they'll just become another bank with a casino attached.
asdfman123 3 hours ago
I hope they refer the exploit as "legerdemain"
wildzzz 11 hours ago
Makes the claim from BI that Supermicro had malicious hardware implants a little more believable, eh?
duskwuff an hour ago
Not really. We have physical proof of the compromised Ledger devices; no one has ever presented any specific evidence that Supermicro hardware was similarly compromised.
stingraycharles 11 hours ago
Reminds me of that time when state actors wanted to spread the Stuxnet worm into an air gapped nucleair facility in Iran, and basically hijacked the whole USB supply chain and put the worm in there.
When enough resources / money is involved, these things are to be expected.
curiousObject 12 hours ago
Here’s a new market for $500 Faraday Cages, if any HN readers are interested in selling that