Was the Ledger Crypto Wallet Hacked? (2/3)

You may have seen some news stories talking about the “hack” of the Ledger wallet – so what really went down?

Although those titles are kind of misleading, there was a hack, just not of the wallet directly; in July 2020 the customer data of the Ledger company was breached and over one million victims had their names, phone numbers, addresses and email addresses exposed.

Using this exposed information, nefarious actors attempted to use social engineering to try and gain access to Ledger customer’s cryptocurrencies. The hackers sent emails and letters explaining that the customer’s device had been exposed and to follow these steps to secure their coins… (the instructions then lead to the customers to lose their coins in various “creative” ways”). Additionally, some hackers took it a step further and sent sealed, packages of replacement Ledgers to customers explaining that they were receiving a new device free of charge, as their old device was vulnerable. This new device was preloaded with a backdoor that provided the hackers everything they needed to steal any coins transferred to the “new” device.

If Ledger can’t even secure their customer information, should I trust them?
That’s really up to you. Technically, Ledger did not directly expose anyone’s coins to these hackers and the devices themselves were all safe. That being said, this situation does not bode well for a company that specializes in securing your precious assets. 

The company has moved forward from the scandal and sales appear to being ramping back up, but it is important to be knowledgeable of this incident when making your decision.