Attacks from exchanges to wallets and how to prevent these attacks?

[nc50lc]

As far as I know, exchanges operate separately and they can't be linked with the hardware wallet or can they ?

If you mean to connect the exchange as a client where the HW can sign its transactions, then it's only possible if the exchange has an integrated hot/watch-only wallet.
DEX has a possibility of implementing something like this since it has self-custodial wallet built-in.

If you mean "connect the wallet to a service" like signing an approval to permit a service to access your funds (e.g. ETH-based tokens, not Bitcoins).
Then, the hardware wallet is basically indirectly connected to it, not the private keys but the funds that it can control.
In this case, your HW can't protect you once you already approved a service to spend from the associated wallet.
This is why "revoking" is important in cases like this. (heads up to @korakwinband once his HW setup is up and running)

[shinratensei_]

Always use hardware wallet if you have the money. If you don't want to buy hardware wallet by any mean you should use wallet in a PC that have freshly installed OS with up to date security update.
I'm very hesitant on using crypto wallet in windows because the Copilot and AI thing that have the potential to expose my data. This is the reason I've used hardware wallet so far and it's not even that expensive.

You should remember not too long ago windows was having controversial feature exposed called Windows Recall where they snapshot your activity.
imagine you are doing your thing with backing up seed phrases and that AI feature unknowingly snapshot all your datas.

[bitmover]

As far as I know, exchanges operate separately and they can't be linked with the hardware wallet or can they ?

If you mean to connect the exchange as a client where the HW can sign its transactions, then it's only possible if the exchange has an integrated hot/watch-only wallet.
DEX has a possibility of implementing something like this since it has self-custodial wallet built-in.

If you mean "connect the wallet to a service" like signing an approval to permit a service to access your funds (e.g. ETH-based tokens, not Bitcoins).
Then, the hardware wallet is basically indirectly connected to it, not the private keys but the funds that it can control.
In this case, your HW can't protect you once you already approved a service to spend from the associated wallet.
This is why "revoking" is important in cases like this. (heads up to @korakwinband once his HW setup is up and running)

I think that even DEX do not offer such security, even when connected to the hardware wallet.

You need to approve the transaction to send the money to the smartcontract. And the smartcontract can be hacked and you can lose money by interacting with smartcontracts (actually that isn't rare, and there a lot of cases if you make a google search).