We are often lead to believe that cryptocurrencies are very safe and not much can go wrong when trading. But sadly, after Ledger’s recent reports that may not be all the is to it.
In the world of Crypto, a cryptographic key controls your coins which is considered to be safe. But for more security, people have started to purchase offline so called “hardware wallets” to store their keys in. But turns out….even this can be scammable, as people have been receiving fraudulent devices aimed to steal their crypto’s.
Source: Ledger Insights
On Reddit there’s been a report by a user by the name of ‘jjrand’ that he received one of these fraudulent packages containing the device, claiming to be from the hardware wallet company Ledger themselves.
It was very official-looking as it was shrink-wrapped with an installation manual which was also purportedly signed by Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier, claiming the recipient needs to use this particular device as their existing product needed a replacement due to a data breach (which had already happened before).
Source: Ledger
With the company being targeted by a series of these phishing campaigns since their data breach last year, they’ve gone to their website to disclose ongoing phishing campaigns in order to educate and advise customers on avoiding being scammed.
What made this scam attempt even more believable is that it was actually a real Ledger Nano X, but the scammers attached a flash drive component to the circuit board containing a fake Ledger application. Here the app would ask to input the 24-word recovery phrase every Ledger device has as security. This would in turn allow the scammers to access all the info they need to rob the person’s cryptocurrencies.
Source: Keycoinassets
According to Ledger’s site, since October 2020 about 392 phishing websites have been shut down since the company’s data breach in July 2020. Thanks to the French authorities and law enforcement they’ve been able to investigate these campaigns when brought to their attention.
Do you invest in crypto, and if so, where do you store them? Do you think it’s the consumers responsibility to ensure these thefts don’t happen, or should Ledger be held responsible and accountable for every incident?
