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Posted by thm 1 day ago

Ledger confirms spy chip implant behind wallet crypto thefts(www.bleepingcomputer.com)
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Crypto-thieves-sell-hardware-wa...

https://crypto.news/ledger-confirms-hidden-chip-in-crypto-wa...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JnHdr30v4g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf4FEFlgv3Q

https://www.tibane.net/research/ledger-nano-x-implant

362 points | 290 commentspage 5
charcircuit 3 hours ago|
Why would they put all this effort in protecting the key within the chip and then go ahead and leak it via the screen?
tantalor 12 hours ago||
It's a skimmer?
brcmthrowaway 4 hours ago||
Couldn't they trace the thief through the eSIM?

Why are theee no legal repurcussions to this?

jacquesm 1 hour ago|
Possibly, there is a lot of KYC involved in setting up an eSIM virtual provider but the party that ordered the eSIMs may not be in the know, and the attacker may have obfuscated their credentials or used high quality fakes.
TacticalCoder 14 hours ago||
I already commented the other day on this exploit but really it's fascinating.

I don't care about cryptocurrencies but I've always been fascinated by the cryptography behind it. I've also dabbled with hardware wallets for non-cryptocurrencies stuff: like U2F auth.

The idea of a master secret that is behind a secure element which I control and which I can duplicate is amazing to me (as opposed to, say, "your" passkeys which Google/Microsoft/Apple can basically backup and transfer to other devices for you).

But really to me in the cryptocurrencies world people have been sold the lie that a hardware wallet was secure: it's not. It could be tampered with (as happened in this hack, where an additional rogue chip reading the screen and then sending it using an eSIM steals the secret) but it can also contain a bug (like the recent Coldcard exploit where Coldcard hardware wallets fell back on a RNG with only 32 bits of entropy and some dark-hat hacker cracked those and stole Bitcoins) and, most of all, the vendor of the hardware wallet itself can do nasty attacks (like "kleptography").

From the very start everybody in the ecosystem should have pushed of "n-of-n" schemes (say even just 2-of-2), where one secret goes on a hardware wallet from one vendor and the other secret goes on a hardware wallet from another vendor.

For years and years the tune has been: "PCs cannot be trusted, use a hardware wallet" but it mislead people.

PCs indeed cannot be trusted but unsuspecting users should have learned how to use 2-of-2 or 3-of-3 schemes, to become immune from hacks affecting one hardware wallet vendor.

The typical, non-sensical, response to this is the idiotic: "but if you have two secrets, if you lose one of them you lose everything". It's totally idiotic for people basically save a list of 24 words (the "seed", which is the master secret). Well, guess what: instead of saving a list of 24 words, you save a list of 48 words. Exact same thing, just twice longer.

That's my take: the entire "your coins will be safe if you use a hardware wallet" was misguided.

cowlevel 13 hours ago||
You might be interested by the Tillltis TKey - it's an open-source open-hardware programmable-by-the-user secure element.
dang 4 hours ago|||
(The previous comment ended up getting merged into this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50046048)
thinkmassive 11 hours ago||
m-of-n provides increased security AND redundancy.

2-of-3 allows loss of one key, 3-of-5 allows loss of two keys, etc

The cost is increased complexity, but the alternative is potentially losing everything due to a single mistake. So far people seem to overweigh the complexity of multisig, and to overestimate their understanding of using a single signing device.

buckle8017 1 day ago||
The tweet doesn't say that ledger installed the chip.

This is some D grade trash writing.

tokai 11 hours ago||
+15 years later and it still doesn't do anything but provide idiots a way to lose their money. It really is impressive.
maidaman 12 hours ago||
Back to paper wallets I guess.
lxgr 12 hours ago|
You should have a paper backup of your hardware wallet anyway. The point of the wallet is to perform cryptographic calculations you’ll probably rather not do in your head.
alchemist1e9 11 hours ago||
This was stealing the seed phrases as they were being displayed so the user could make the paper backup you suggest and in the process have all their current and future coins stolen.
lxgr 10 hours ago||
Yes, somehow the hardware wallet does need to import or export the seed phrase in some form.
AnaMaria09 1 hour ago||
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djohnston 13 hours ago||
[dead]
InsidiousWombat 12 hours ago|
finally, good use for eSIMs /s But damn, it's hard problem to fix. Put it in epoxy and while tampering is harder (not impossible! also can just replace whole module), you can't verify it
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