[2018-01-08] Life Savings Stolen from Second-hand Ledger Hardware Wallet

[cybersofts]

Life Savings Stolen from Second-hand Ledger Hardware Wallet



A man’s life savings disappeared from a Ledger brand Nano hardware wallet after Reddit user moodyrocket purchased the wallet second-hand on eBay. The stolen coins amount to over $34,000.

According to posts on Reddit, the seller of the wallet utilized a ‘man in the middle’ attack, inserting his own recovery seed rather than the random seed assigned by the manufacturer. According to the post:

   “I have not used my Ledger in a week, today I decide to check the value of my XRP, Litecoin and Dash only to discover that all of them showed up as zero and had been transferred somewhere else yesterday all around the same time at 7:30pm. I am not sure how this is possible as I have not access my Ledger in a week. I do not know what do to as the total value is over £25000, has by currency been stolen or is it something else? I am at a lost here and right now feel so physical sick. Some please help.”

The post shows the extent to which thieves will go to access coin wallets. Ledger’s CEO (user murzika) has offered to help ‘bring the seller to justice’ through legal means.


Need for security

As values of cryptocurrencies continue to increase, the reality of security needs continues to increase. Stories of theft and hacking continue to proliferate. For individual users some additional technology may eventually be required. Vadim Onishchenko, CEO of Blockchain photo sharing system Selfllery told Cointelegraph:

    "We used to ask ourselves: Where is it better to keep your money, at home in a safe or in the bank? None of these options is ever completely safe. Cryptocurrency is no different: the safety issue is very complex, because there are lots of ways to break into accounts, or to force people to give over their holdings. There needs to be a mechanism ensuring complete safety, because the current options are all lacking. A new technology is needed to protect cryptocurrency."


Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/life-savings-stolen-from-second-hand-ledger-hardware-wallet

[Samarkand]

...

A man’s life savings disappeared from a Ledger brand Nano hardware wallet after Reddit user moodyrocket purchased the wallet second-hand on eBay. The stolen coins amount to over $34,000.
...

I would strongly recommend everyone to learn from the mistakes of this guy.
Never buy a hardware wallet - or any other device that is somehow related to
the security of your finances - from eBay or another place that sells second-hand
products.

Don´t try to save a few $ and pay for it with introducing risks like this.
Pay the full price and order your hardware wallet from a legit vendor and make
sure the security seal is still unopened.

[1Referee]

Feel sorry for that person, but it just shows how important it is to buy a brand new device from the original source. I am so paranoid about everything, that I would never ever purchase a second hand hardware wallet, even knowing that I can just wipe out everything and have it reset to a brand new state. I am not using hardware wallets at all, and will definitely not do so when it comes to the majority of my cold wallet coins (has nothing to do with this article). The only reason I might end up buying a hardware wallet, is for some other wallets that I regularly spend from. But the only thing that is a bit confusing here, is till what extend does the value of the stolen crypto funds account for his life savings? 50%? 75%? 100%? If 100%, then it's an utter stupid move.