Ledger halts wallet sales in Asia after hardware implants
Ledger has told its resellers and distributors in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong to stop selling its cryptocurrency wallets and take stock off the shelves. The move follows the discovery of hardware implants in devices that steal the recovery phrases protecting users' crypto assets.
The company makes physical hardware wallets that keep the private keys used to manage and approve digital asset transactions. Those keys are meant to stay on the device. The tampered wallets were built to undo that protection.
How the investigation started
Several users reported losing cryptocurrency, and Ledger opened an investigation on October 9. It confirmed that some devices sold by CryptoBilis, a reseller in Southeast Asia, had been modified. The modified wallets captured users' seed phrases and sent them to an unauthorized party over an LTE mobile connection.