Ledger says 'spy' chip inside CryptoBilis Ledger devices transmitted wallet keys over mobile network

Covert hardware implanted in some Ledger crypto wallet devices sold by Southeast Asian reseller CryptoBilis read users’ 24-word recovery phrases from the gadget screen and sent them to an attacker over a mobile phone network, Ledger said Tuesday in an investigation update on X. Ledger said the spy chip sat inside the device enclosure. When a user set up the signer and the screen displayed the recovery phrase, the implant’s microcontroller recognized and decoded the words, then transmitted them over LTE, a data transmission technology used by cellphones, utilizing an eSIM.