Ledger has suspended sales of its hardware wallets across six Southeast Asian countries and Hong Kong as it investigates tampered devices fitted with unauthorized LTE-enabled implants. The broader halt marks a shift from what first appeared to be isolated customer losses into a regional supply-chain incident affecting multiple markets.
Ledger’s Donjon security team said the implant used a microcontroller to read the 24-word recovery phrase displayed during setup and transmit it to a third party over LTE, without altering the Secure Element chip inside the wallet. That matters because it points to physical tampering somewhere along the supply chain, not a flaw in Ledger’s device design.
The risk is supply-chain integrity: rather than just stopping business with a single rogue reseller, Ledger has paused sales across those regions. The company has not confirmed final loss numbers or given a user count, but media estimates cited losses between roughly $72 million and $93 million, with one report describing a suspected $86 million drain.
This is no longer about a one-off compromised shipment. It is about whether a hardware wallet maker can secure its distribution chain as well as the device itself. For now, the exact scale and reach of the attack remain unclear.