Hardware Wallet Buyers Face Tampering They Cannot Easily Detect

Hardware Wallet Buyers Face Tampering They Cannot Easily Detect

Security researcher Joe Grand, Trezor and crypto executives examine the middlemen behind hardware wallet distribution and the limits of detecting physical modifications.

Reverse engineering a Ledger Nano X hardware implant

Writing on core-jmp.org, oxfemale walks through Joe Grand’s HARDWEAR.IO 2026 talk in Santa Clara, where Grand tore down a real hardware implant found inside a counterfeit Ledger Nano X. The unit came from a Lazada seller in Thailand and surfaced in an August 2025 Reddit post. The implant doesn’t touch the Secure Element. It sits […]

Ledger Wallet Implant Exposes Limits of Supply-Chain Security Checks

The implant captured recovery phrases and transmitted them over cellular networks. Trezor says packaging and firmware checks cannot rule out physical tampering.

Trezor Wallets Also Compromised with Implants

Despite claims by Trezor today that none of its devices have been compromised -- unlike the devices of its competitor, Ledger -- hardware hacker Joe Grand says he found implants in two Trezor devices and reported this to the company in August.