It was a Ledger authorized reseller, not just an ordinary 3rd party seller so that makes the situation even worse. I hope the affected users are compensated for their losses.

I see hardware wallets as nothing more than cute accessories. I received a Ledger wallet as a gift back then, but I never used it to store my money. Even if I think it's safe, a little paranoia is a good thing. There are other ways to store coins, so I don't really need to use that one.

Exactly! The advice has always been to either buy directly from the official store or from authorized resellers only. Here's an authorized reseller installing spy implants inside devices. Because Ledger authorized them, this also Ledger's full responsibility.

It's basically Ledger who told everybody to trust them. They themselves do. And now that funds are stolen, they should also be paying the damages.

By the way, my hunch is that this criminal operation started when ownership was fully transferred to somebody from China known as Jiaming.

And since this reseller is also an official reseller of Trezor, Tangem, Safepal, and several other hardware wallets, perhaps the urgent warning to move funds goes out to them as well.

Buying directly from the official store is the safest option for me. You never know if someone has tampered with the device or its packaging before selling it. Better to be careful when your BTC is on the line.

Or maybe someone was able to gain access to those wallets while they were still with Cryptobilis, they are responsible for whatever happens to those wallets in their custody but that doesn't mean they were the perpetrators, all sales from then have been suspended and the issue should be properly investigated, if the tampering happened with Ledger themselves and all the blames goes to Cryptobilis then it's only a matter of time till another reseller gets blamed for the bitcoin theft.

I'm not even a fan of using a hardware wallet, and therefore I will not be one of those who depends on any third-party agent to secure one; I would rather depend on using a non-custodial wallet that I can easily use, like Electrum or a blue wallet.

Privacy is not something we can afford to risk because we don't know who might compromise the process along the way, even if this is not coming from the developers; as long as a third-party agent is involved, the search is subject to risk.

We are learning in this case, but it will indeed be very difficult to find someone who is truly honest in this industry. Ledger companies have certainly anticipated this in various ways, including authenticity checks. The Ledger wallet industry network cannot be separated from distributors, including third parties. Even when the company’s products are genuine and meet safety standards, crimes can still occur during transit, including counterfeiting and possibly the addition of skimming devices that do not change the physical appearance.

There is no clarity at this time, it seems Ledger is investigating this, and Cryptobilis is currently suspected of being a reseller selling Ledger. However, it turns out that the CEO of Cryptobilis has already made a statement that Cryptobilis changed ownership at the beginning of the year. This change was also not known to the public due to an agreement not to disclose the change publicly. This issue is also currently a hot topic in my local forum.

I've honestly think about this too many times in the past, buy massive amount of wallets from manufacturers and sell to be public after doing something to them and wait many years for Bitcoin holders to relax and trust the wallet even more.

Many will slowly DCA Iinto Bitcoin, 2 BTC will turn 20 BTC and on a good afternoon like this I will just pull the plug, it's a big goldmine, this always comes to mind, I am not surprised that this happened.

Earn holders trust and pull the plug lol, but another part of me is feeling like the banks are looking more trustworthy than hardware wallet, maybe this was the goal after all.

The status of Cryptobilis can be checked on Ledger's official website:


https://shop.ledger.com/pages/resellers?continent=asia+%26+oceania&country=indonesia


Ledger's goal in making authorized sellers is to ensure that the devices purchased by users are genuinely authentic and to make shipping more affordable for users who want to own the product. In this case, Cryptobilis isn't just any third party - they are an authorized seller, which means they should be more trustworthy and reliable because of their status, as explained by Ledger in their article.



But the problem is that the authorized sellers are actually distributing products that seem 'modified,' and it causes losses to the users.

In fact, in their statement, Ledger said that they assess their authorized sellers and ensure that the devices received by users are in original, unaltered condition. Check out their statement here:

https://support.ledger.com/article/Purchasing-from-an-authorised-reseller

So this situation is actually so ridiculous because in another statement, Ledger seemed to treat this seller like an ordinary seller, even though they are actually their "authorized seller", in which they said they had carefully assessed before making it their authorized seller.

The point is that many investors are concerned after two hardware wallets Ledger and ColdCard were hacked this year because we think these wallets are the most secure for storing Bitcoin investments safely. Actually OP you should note that this Ledger company itself has hired resellers for marketing purposes and they have many resellers all over the world as you can see at this link.

https://shop.ledger.com/pages/resellers?srsltid=AU7gw4XDoS2muMI16jJjYF93Qd9K1d-VegTQs_uoZXTOKVC9UhHz86zt&continent=america&country=argentina

Anyway they already mentioned that people who bought and setup ledger from cryptobilis reseller in the last 90 days are affected but I think people who bought earlier may not be affected yet. You can even check out their recent update that an unauthorized hardware implant was found on the device of one of the affected users and they have ordered Cryptobilis to stop selling this hardware wallet out of concern for their customers.