The recent Ledger supply-chain attack and why it doesn’t affect Hashwallet

If you’re a Hashwallet user, you may have been wondering whether your Hashwallet is safe. Well, it is. But let’s look at how the security works together.

What happened

Ledger confirmed that devices sold through a reseller were physically tampered with before reaching buyers. Inside, a hidden circuit board with a microcontroller, an LTE module, and a tiny eSIM had been added. The devices arrived sealed and passed Ledger’s authenticity check, and when users set up their wallet, the implant read the 24-word recovery phrase shown on the screen and sent it to the attackers over the mobile network.

Why this attack doesn’t work on Hashwallet

1. No battery. The Hashwallet card has no battery. It runs on the energy your phone sends through NFC while you scan it, which isn’t enough to power a hidden implant like the one found in the Ledger devices.
2. There’s no casing to hide malicious hardware in.
3. Your keys cannot leave the chip. The Hashwallet firmware has no commands to expose or display keys. Keys are generated or imported inside the chip, and they don’t leave it. Since the firmware can’t be updated, malicious updates can’t add a way out.
4. The card alone doesn’t hold complete keys. When you generate or import a seed, Hashwallet automatically creates a cryptographic element that works like a passphrase. It’s stored encrypted in the app, so the keys inside the chip aren’t complete on their own.
5. Each card has its own encryption. Every card uses a different encryption schema, so breaking one card gives no advantage over the rest. This makes large-scale attacks cumbersome and economically unattractive.