Singapore Airport's purchased Ledger Flex confirmed to have implanted spy module, hardware wallet supply chain risk expands.

October 13: Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès has publicly confirmed that a Ledger Flex purchased at the Metapod store in Singapore Changi Airport had a spy module implanted inside it. The device was bought by user Ben Yorke this summer, never used, and sent for teardown after suspicious scratches were found on its casing. Karpelès released teardown photos and videos showing an extra circuit board and wiring hidden at the bottom of the device, belonging to a newer version of the implant, which can steal the seed phrase when the user sets up the mnemonic by monitoring screen communications and other means.

Previously, Ledger devices from the Malaysian distributor CryptoBilis channel were found to have been implanted, leading to the theft of over $86 million in assets. This airport channel case further indicates that the problem is not isolated. The community has successively discovered similar implantation traces in devices purchased from official European distributors and in the Philippines, with the related implants gradually upgrading from early hand-soldered versions to more covert mass-produced circuit boards.