Hardware Wallet Supply Chain Attack Leads to $100 Million Theft, Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès Reveals Ledger Attack Details

Odaily News: According to Bitcoin News monitoring, Bitcoin News released a podcast in which former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès and Foundation CEO Zach Herbert discussed the largest supply chain attack in crypto industry history. Mark Karpelès stated that he discovered the spy implant 3 weeks before the funds were stolen and contacted Ledger, but received no response. The implant had a built-in hidden cellular modem that could directly read the seed phrase on the screen and passed Ledger's own checks; even setting a passphrase could not prevent the seed phrase from being stolen. Mark Karpelès said that with $5 million, he could create an implant that would only be detectable through X-ray. The episode also discussed the hardware wallet reseller model, the Malaysian reseller behind the attack, on-chain tracking of stolen crypto assets, the spread of the attack to Europe, why Trezor was not targeted, hardware wallet security, and multi-party computation solutions. The episode timeline shows that the amount stolen from hardware wallets reached $100 million, with $86 million transferred out within 24 hours.