Mark Karpelès Opened the Ledgers. The Spy Chips Are Mass-Produced.

More than $90 million was drained from roughly 320 Ledger wallets across multiple chains. Ledger says neither its chip nor its software was compromised and that every confirmed case traces to Malaysian reseller Crypto Billus. Mark Karpelès, however, says implanted devices were also reported from two authorized shops in Singapore and from Media Mart in Germany. The reports raise a supply-chain question beyond whether a wallet’s secure chip is genuine: a device can be altered after production or before it reaches a buyer.

Karpelès says a discounted Nano X he ordered from a Chinese seller on Amazon Japan arrived from Malaysia with hardware absent from the device’s design: an antenna wire, LTE modem, SIM card and microcontroller. The implant taps display test points to intercept signals carrying information shown on the screen, including the seed phrase. Of three additional devices he ordered, two arrived implanted and one never shipped. He says he has collected three generations of the hardware; the latest uses a flex PCB aligned with the board’s test pads, secured with solder points and a capacitor, and connected to the battery.

The design’s progression suggests to Karpelès that someone has refined the implant through field feedback. He says the newest version is difficult to install incorrectly and appears suitable for hundreds of installations or more, unlike the hand-wired version demonstrated by Joe Grand. Karpelès estimates at least 100 implanted devices, fewer than the roughly 320 drained wallets, and puts the component cost below $20. Those figures do not establish how many devices were made or who made them. He speculates that a company could be producing implants for others to install, but says he has not identified a manufacturer.

Karpelès says the implanted devices he personally bought came from a sketchy Amazon seller, not an authorized channel, and that he expected trouble. He does not know how the reported German device reached the store and does not accuse the retailer, citing distributor supply or a device being replaced on a shelf as possible explanations. He says Ledger had known about implants since early in the year: a January support reply said the secure element’s genuine-device check would detect extra hardware. Karpelès argues that this is misleading because the implant intercepts signals between the secure element and screen, a route he says Ledger’s documentation indicates the check cannot inspect. He also says Ledger added photographs of older and newer implants to a Ledger Academy page in March, beneath guidance on buying a device.

Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier responded to Karpelès’s warnings by saying his Mt. Gox record did not make him an expert on Ledger’s situation. Karpelès says that after Mt. Gox’s Bitcoin went missing, the company called lawyers, sought investors and tried to resume operations before ultimately going bankrupt; creditors are still being paid. He argues that transparent communication can limit losses during crypto incidents, while acknowledging that judging past decisions is easier in hindsight. He says all the implants he has seen use an LTE-tuned cellular antenna to transmit the seed phrase, and has prototyped an external detector that can identify the antenna without powering on the wallet. He intends to publish its design openly and hopes it will cost less than a wallet and be available within weeks. Nano X implants weigh about 1.2 grams, he says, less than the 1–2 gram variation he found between Ledger devices, making weight an unreliable test.

Karpelès says the odds of a wallet being compromised are very low and that he knows of no implants in the Nano S or Nano S Plus so far. Users who do not want to inspect a device can buy directly from Ledger; if they find an implant, he says they should treat the seed phrase as permanently compromised and calmly move funds to a verified wallet, avoiding panic-driven searches that could lead to malware. For larger holdings, he recommends 2-of-3 multisig across different brands so that no single device can compromise the funds. He sees no reason for users of other wallet brands to switch, while the implant reports leave unresolved how far the hardware spread and whether anyone beyond its makers commissioned it.