Ledger Confirms Tampered Chip Planted in Devices Resold via CryptoBilis, MediaMarkt Pulls Products from European Shelves

The entire point of a hardware wallet is that the seed phrase never passes through any intermediary device. This incident struck right at that core premise: Ledger has confirmed that devices sold through the CryptoBilis channel contained a non-original hardware component secretly planted inside, designed to steal users' recovery phrases.

The seed phrase is the final lock on a hardware wallet—once it leaks, everything inside the wallet is effectively exposed, since anyone can use it to reconstruct the private key and drain the funds. Ledger's statement specifically pointed to units sold through CryptoBilis as the source of the problem, not devices from official channels.

Following this, major European retail chain MediaMarkt has suspended sales of the affected products across the European market. The move itself speaks to how serious the issue is: the retailer chose to pull the products first and sort out the details later, rather than waiting for things to be clarified.

For now, that's the extent of what's publicly known. Officials have yet to specify which exact models are affected, the scope of regions involved, or what steps consumers can take to check their devices.