Ledger investigates potential wallet tampering after reports of $86 million in crypto stolen

As a precaution, the company said it asked CryptoBilis to pause all sales and shipments while its investigation continues. Ledger advised customers who purchased devices from the reseller within the past 90 days not to begin setting them up. Those who have already activated their wallets should consider moving their assets to a new Ledger device with a newly generated recovery phrase, the company said.

The potential theft may add to an already rough year for crypto security. Last month, crypto exchange Bitget suffered an exploit that resulted in over $350 million in stolen assets. Other major incidents included Liquid Network at about $320 million, Drift at $295 million and Kelp at $293 million, according to DefiLlama data.

In Ledger’s case, one possible explanation is a supply-chain attack, in which hardware wallets are tampered with before reaching customers. For example, an attacker could supply a device with a recovery phrase they already know, allowing them to access funds deposited into the wallet at a later date.

Such a scenario would differ from a breach of Ledger's own systems. However, there is no confirmation that device tampering or pre-generated recovery phrases caused the reported losses.

The incident remains under investigation, and it is unclear how many users were affected, whether the reported thefts are connected or how much cryptocurrency was lost.