How safe a ledger is?

[Aura]

Looking at the title I thought you were referring to the safety of the distributed ledger (blockchain) but you actually mean the hardware wallet. I think it's important to check the authenticity of the hardware wallet that you're buying, just like you do when you download a software wallet where you verify the signature. To ensure at least some authenticity, please buy it from the official website. It's basically the same as if you download the software wallet from the official website instead of a third party. I don't own a hardware wallet myself, but I believe I read somewhere that the the ledger does an authenticity test, using public key cryptography on the chrome application. That's quite bulletproof as I haven't heard of an exploit yet. The product also comes with a seal on the package, this can also prove some authenticity. But personally I still prefer an air-gapped machine, running wallet software that's build from source. It's cheaper and proves much more authenticity.

[BitChief]

Hi everyone, I just wanted to ask your perspective about having ledger. There's a lot of rumor that even brand new ledgers hacked because of it's fake seals. Checking your insights about this one.

You worried what happened to this guy? https://np.reddit.com/r/ledgerwallet/comments/7obot7/all_my_cryptocurrency_stolen/All my cryptocurrency stolen (self.ledgerwallet).
I'll add what others verified that nano ledger s is very safe. Just purchase directly from www.ledgerwallet.com or with any of them www.ledgerwallet.com/retailers

Thak you for advice, I wan't buy Ledger but I am afraid that it will broke and I will lose my money(

Don't buy to resellers on ebay, buy to ledgers main website or retailers.

I am reading in the link you provided that Ledger CEO and CTO officially took care of that matter and are helping that poor guy file the complaint to the police. He knows who sold him the Ledger so chances are very high the police will be able to track down who was the scammer (if it was a seller, or some other middleman) and hopefully get the money back to the poor guy.

The lesson learnt is to always buy it from the official source. It comes sealed and you can be sure it was not tampered with.
You see, the small money you may save buying it from some fishy source may be not worth the risk of loosing ALL your crypto holdings!

A ledger is by far more secure than say a keystore, however the challenge then becomes is the ledger itself physically secure. Do you keep it in a safe area, who knows that you have it and how do you physically secure it, is fire damage a risk

[Rggadi]

Dont worry ledger is a very safe device to use and to protect your bitcoins and altcoins. the company will not store any keys from you.

[Mr.Smithers]

Hi everyone, I just wanted to ask your perspective about having ledger. There's a lot of rumor that even brand new ledgers hacked because of it's fake seals. Checking your insights about this one.

You worried what happened to this guy? https://np.reddit.com/r/ledgerwallet/comments/7obot7/all_my_cryptocurrency_stolen/All my cryptocurrency stolen (self.ledgerwallet).
I'll add what others verified that nano ledger s is very safe. Just purchase directly from www.ledgerwallet.com or with any of them www.ledgerwallet.com/retailers

Thak you for advice, I wan't buy Ledger but I am afraid that it will broke and I will lose my money(

Don't buy to resellers on ebay, buy to ledgers main website or retailers.

I am reading in the link you provided that Ledger CEO and CTO officially took care of that matter and are helping that poor guy file the complaint to the police. He knows who sold him the Ledger so chances are very high the police will be able to track down who was the scammer (if it was a seller, or some other middleman) and hopefully get the money back to the poor guy.

The lesson learnt is to always buy it from the official source. It comes sealed and you can be sure it was not tampered with.
You see, the small money you may save buying it from some fishy source may be not worth the risk of loosing ALL your crypto holdings!

A ledger is by far more secure than say a keystore, however the challenge then becomes is the ledger itself physically secure. Do you keep it in a safe area, who knows that you have it and how do you physically secure it, is fire damage a risk

Ledger and Trezor are both very secure (in fact, I find using them both to have a similar experience). Trezor used to have an exploit but it is now resolved as far as I know. I cannot speak for a keystore device.

Keeping any of them physically secure AFTER they are initiated is not that important, they both have built in PIN protection methods (Ledger reinitiaites after a PIN has been wrongly entered 3 times, Trezor doubles the interval in-between PIN attempts).

The other two risks that I consider to be much greater are the following:
1. the robbery in which you are pressured and made to reveal your PIN (with a gun against your head or your child's head). Here it may be helpful that you may hide your funds under one PIN and some other smaller amount under another PIN
2. that your recovery 24 word backup is found and disclosed. I would advice physically securing that particular piece of information with much greater care than the Ledger device itself

[Pan Troglodytes]

A ledger is by far more secure than say a keystore, however the challenge then becomes is the ledger itself physically secure. Do you keep it in a safe area, who knows that you have it and how do you physically secure it, is fire damage a risk

Ledger and Trezor are both very secure (in fact, I find using them both to have a similar experience). Trezor used to have an exploit but is is now resolved as far as I know. I cannot speak for a keystore device.

Keeping any of them physically secure AFTER they are initiated is not that important, they both have built in PIN protection methods (Ledger reinitiaites after a PIN has been wrongly entered 3 times, Trezor doubles the interval in-between PIN attempts).

The other two risks that I consider to be much greater are the following:
1. the robbery in which you are pressured and made to reveal your PIN (with a gun against your head or your child's head). Here it may be helpful that you may hide your funds under one PIN and some other smaller amount under another PIN
2. that your recovery 24 word backup is found and disclosed. I would advice physically securing that particular piece of information with much greater care than the Ledger device itself

And the option 1 is not such a pure fantasy as one might think. There is a link to a real story:
https://www.coindesk.com/uk-crypto-trader-forced-to-hand-over-bitcoin-at-gunpoint/

I would advise to anybody to buy a ledger, true, but it is even more advisable to keep low profile about the crypto one has.

[batang_bitcoin]

Hi everyone, I just wanted to ask your perspective about having ledger. There's a lot of rumor that even brand new ledgers hacked because of it's fake seals. Checking your insights about this one.

You worried what happened to this guy? https://np.reddit.com/r/ledgerwallet/comments/7obot7/all_my_cryptocurrency_stolen/All my cryptocurrency stolen (self.ledgerwallet).
I'll add what others verified that nano ledger s is very safe. Just purchase directly from www.ledgerwallet.com or with any of them www.ledgerwallet.com/retailers

Thak you for advice, I wan't buy Ledger but I am afraid that it will broke and I will lose my money(

Don't buy to resellers on ebay, buy to ledgers main website or retailers.

I am reading in the link you provided that Ledger CEO and CTO officially took care of that matter and are helping that poor guy file the complaint to the police. He knows who sold him the Ledger so chances are very high the police will be able to track down who was the scammer (if it was a seller, or some other middleman) and hopefully get the money back to the poor guy.

The lesson learnt is to always buy it from the official source. It comes sealed and you can be sure it was not tampered with.
You see, the small money you may save buying it from some fishy source may be not worth the risk of loosing ALL your crypto holdings!

That's why I'm really impressed on what the officials of Ledger company did to make their reputation remain and they are not associated with any person who wants to hack or scam their customers. The problem came along with the buyer who is not aware that the ledger he bought isn't sealed and keys are already generated and he isn't aware that the reseller has fooled him that those words was already copied by him.

[Hedvigknows]

I would say it is quite safe, but nothing is perfect in this world. Some time ago we thought that banks are safe and every day I read news how some one got hacked etc.

[HodlingCrypto]

Every hardware wallet should be safer than a software wallet. Modern hardware wallets have built-in screens which help to check if the address wasn't changed by some sort of malware.

[datodota002]

It safe enough, there are many case of hacked ledger or scammed, this is al about the use why they wwould believe to something that not have good reputation. why they risk their money for safe their money to something not safe. my advice becarefull dude, do bot believe any scam look websitr and still using reliable sources

[tyuner4]

If you buy Ledger from the official website, it should be safe. The hacked Ledger i heard of are mainly from eBay and other unofficial sources.

[freetokens]

As of now LEDGER NANO is the safest hardware wallet

[Mr.Smithers]

Hi everyone, I just wanted to ask your perspective about having ledger. There's a lot of rumor that even brand new ledgers hacked because of it's fake seals. Checking your insights about this one.

You worried what happened to this guy? https://np.reddit.com/r/ledgerwallet/comments/7obot7/all_my_cryptocurrency_stolen/All my cryptocurrency stolen (self.ledgerwallet).
I'll add what others verified that nano ledger s is very safe. Just purchase directly from www.ledgerwallet.com or with any of them www.ledgerwallet.com/retailers

Thak you for advice, I wan't buy Ledger but I am afraid that it will broke and I will lose my money(

Don't buy to resellers on ebay, buy to ledgers main website or retailers.

I am reading in the link you provided that Ledger CEO and CTO officially took care of that matter and are helping that poor guy file the complaint to the police. He knows who sold him the Ledger so chances are very high the police will be able to track down who was the scammer (if it was a seller, or some other middleman) and hopefully get the money back to the poor guy.

The lesson learnt is to always buy it from the official source. It comes sealed and you can be sure it was not tampered with.
You see, the small money you may save buying it from some fishy source may be not worth the risk of loosing ALL your crypto holdings!

That's why I'm really impressed on what the officials of Ledger company did to make their reputation remain and they are not associated with any person who wants to hack or scam their customers. The problem came along with the buyer who is not aware that the ledger he bought isn't sealed and keys are already generated and he isn't aware that the reseller has fooled him that those words was already copied by him.

The real problem may be when a hack of your ledger is much more subtle than the 24 words which are pre-generated. For instance, it may come with a replaced malevolent firmware which would generate the predefined sequence of 24 word seeds, although you would generate them yourself and would not be aware they are predefined and the hacker knows them. Still, there is this seal that would be tampered with.

Anyway, best to buy from original manufacturer.

[jbarcenas18]

It's safe enough. If you're worried about that, buy it directly from the Ledgerwallet website or their official resellers which you can find on the site, don't use eBay etc.

Thak you for advice, I wan't buy Ledger but I am afraid that it will broke and I will lose my money(

There is no need to worry about it breaking. The ledger comes with a little paper, when you create your wallet it gives you a 24 word recovery phrase which you write down on to the paper. If the device ever breaks, all you need to do is buy a new ledger, and recreate your wallet with that 24 word recovery phrase.

I think I don't need to say it - never give ANYONE that recovery phrase The only way that someone can have access to your account, is if they were to steal your recovery phrase. Your computer can have a million viruses and keyloggers, and it still won't get information from your ledger. However, you should still invest in decent anti virus and anti-malware software. My trusted combination is MalwareBytes and ESET.

The ledger won't protect you from yourself.

Thank you for sharing your idea, this can be in a great help like me who is new and catching up more ideas in this forum.

[Pan Troglodytes]

Hi everyone, I just wanted to ask your perspective about having ledger. There's a lot of rumor that even brand new ledgers hacked because of it's fake seals. Checking your insights about this one.

There was this reddit story about a guy who bought a tampered-with device from eBay: https://np.reddit.com/r/ledgerwallet/comments/7obot7/all_my_cryptocurrency_stolen/ and many others

But I think that as long as you verify the seal not to be broken and you buy from the original vendor only, you are safe. Read this: https://www.ledger.fr/2015/03/27/how-to-protect-hardware-wallets-against-tampering/

[Dyatrev]

I have never used ledger. But i have heart it is safe because of its storage size. It is very small to be affected by viruses.