22-Mar-18, Asia Times
The personal crypto-currency hardware wallet market has boomed, from around one million unit sales in 2014 to more than 20 mn. The wallet can be plugged into a computer USB to allow the owner to trade cryptos while also protecting the encrypted identity numbers.
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A 15-year-old boy from the UK, Saleem Rashid, has worked out how to hack one. He hacked the market-leading Ledger Nano-S. Because these wallets are now sold through third party sellers via the likes of Amazon and eBay, they can be hacked by a crooked seller who can embed malicious code that allows the hacker to lie (virtually) in wait before emptying the user's crypto account.