Another month, more news about hardware wallet incidents. A sad recurrence.

[Pmalek]

Technically speaking, no Bitcoin wallet is really a wallet. The coins are on the blockchain. The "wallet" manages keys. I think the term "wallet" leads to so much confusion among newcomers, but it's a long established term, so we're stuck with it.

Wallet is simpler and easier. It doesn't hold your coins but it holds, generates, and manages keys. We can't start calling it "keys manager", "key holder" or something else at this point because it would create more confusion than offer clarity. It also seems more technical than a simple "wallet." Newbies might go, I don't want a key manager, just give me a wallet.

I also hate the term 25th word, because it mistakenly implies a passphrase should be a single word. That encourages people to create weak and easily hackable passphrases.

I agree. I don't know who came up with that but it's really bad. I don't use the term "25th word" and I don't like it. My guess is that someone came up with that because "passphrase" can mean different things in Bitcoin. The BIP39 passphrase or seed extension that it mostly refers to and then there is the encryption passphrase (password) use to encrypt local wallet data files. At some point, people even referred to the seed phrase as passphrase, but that's probably the least used meaning of the three I mentioned. 

[X-ray]

That's not even safe, as explained by you.

It's not truly airgapped, because it has wifi and bluetooth hardware. Even if you don't use them, how do you PROVE they're not accessible? "I turned them off" isn't an acceptable answer. It also came with preinstalled software, as you explained, all of which adds various forms of risks.

When I refer to DIY, I don't mean things like that at all. I'm referring to serious open source projects for Bitcoin like SeedSigner, ShieldSigner, Krux, Kern, and to a lesser extent, DIY Jade. Things that were designed and are maintained entirely with the security of Bitcoin in mind.

Don't get me wrong. I debated buying an old Mac, wiping it out and installing various things to create my own DIY wallet... but common sense kicked in long before I even attempted it.

The limitations of hardware like a Raspberry Pi Zero are actually a huge benefit. No wifi. No bluetooth. No software. It's just a board, and the only hardware is whatever you attach (a camera and an LCD screen). Flash firmware you trust to a micro SD card, and that's your hardware.

Yeah it's definitely not perfectly safe which is why I'm still using mass manufactured hardware wallet, but it was an interesting experiment.

The only reason I think this is safe is because the mini pc is manufactured by reputable brand which I know isn't an acceptable answer either.

This discussion actually intrigued me to try building my own SeedSigner considering ledger and trezor doesn't feel so safe anymore maybe I'll check out how much it actually going to cost to build one. The paranoia with manufactured hardware wallet is off the chart with the recent tampering incident kinda justify this spending. 

[FinneysTrueVision]

There have been so many incidents that Foundation and Dcent didn’t even get included in this image. The only well known wallet brand that I don’t remember having a major security incident this year was Blockstream Jade. However, Blockstream was responsible for the vulnerability on the Liquid Network. There isn’t any company which you can say has a perfect track record. It is honestly demoralizing seeing so many hacks. If I needed to buy a new hardware wallet today, I would struggle to choose a specific vendor.

[greysonz]

There have been so many incidents that Foundation and Dcent didn’t even get included in this image. The only well known wallet brand that I don’t remember having a major security incident this year was Blockstream Jade. However, Blockstream was responsible for the vulnerability on the Liquid Network. There isn’t any company which you can say has a perfect track record. It is honestly demoralizing seeing so many hacks. If I needed to buy a new hardware wallet today, I would struggle to choose a specific vendor.

Perhaps we can look at this from a positive perspective: with each hack, wallets patch up their security holes and become stronger, albeit at a high cost to users' funds. This means that in this strange time of "AI audits," they will finally be able to polish their security skills. These are uncertain times, but they will eventually pass if hardware wallet manufacturers take the right actions and draw the right conclusions. I'm still waiting for some clear results from the investigation. Regarding the chip stories in Ledger wallets, some time has passed, and I'd like to know at what point in the "creation-delivery" chain the implants were introduced.