The users of more than 300 Ledger cryptocurrency wallets have suffered an estimated $86 million to $93 million in losses after thieves drained assets across blockchains including bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tron. Ledger is a popular manufacturer of hardware wallets — a type of physical, offline device used to store cryptocurrency keys in an attempt to be more secure than storing keys on Internet-connected devices.
Ledger has claimed that the targeted wallets appear to have been sold via CryptoBilis, a Southeast Asian reseller that operates in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Ledger said that at least one affected device "contained an unauthorized hardware implant". Several third party researchers disassembled affected hardware devices, finding that a chip and antenna had been added to capture crypto wallet seed phrases and transmit the data to the attacker using a cellular connection.