Hardware spyware

[gotoPzero]

Just seen a video of a bitcoin wallet which contains a sophisticated parasitic spy circuit board within the factory device.
This was bought brand new.

Something to be aware of! It looks like the board has the ability to connect to the outside world via an e-sim.

The technology is physically tiny - could easily be hidden in most larger devices like laptops, phones etc and looks OEM so unless you knew what you were looking for it would be hard to tell that its not meant to be there.

[Condi]

There was a company selling wallets for some crytocurrency (not Bitcoin, but I forget which one), and a 3rd party had installed the chip off a SIM card and it was transmitting everyone's information back to the hackers who then went and emptied the wallets.

[CloudStuff]

“Ledger” devices I think.

[IanH755]

A news story with more info - https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/10/09/ledge...

[JoshSm]

st design and a st supply chain and st manufacturer auditing and people are surprised they got compromised.

The actual hack isn't that clever and the bits not particularly small or fancy, the bigger issue is that it could happen at all as it's a normal foreseeable risk.

People build hardened anti tamper gear all the time, including for finance and other purposes worth targeting for $$$$, then you have 'clever' people jump in, do stuff on the cheap, and wonder why it goes a bit wrong.

Square were another one who took a while to catch up on things the rest of their industry already knew - but it meant they had a cheaper product even if 'cheap' meant a bit st.

[butchstewie]

Took the words out of my mouth.

If I were in the market for a hardware wallet - especially given the potential sums involved - I think I'd be very careful which one I bought and where I bought it from.