Ledger Uncovers Critical Security Flaw in Common Android Chip - Millions of Devices Vulnerable

Your Android phone's hardware might be betraying your crypto wallet. Ledger's security research team just dropped a bombshell—a fundamental vulnerability baked into a widely used Android chipset. This isn't about a buggy app you can delete; it's a flaw in the silicon itself.

The Invisible Backdoor

The issue lies in a trusted component designed to handle sensitive operations. Ledger's white-hat hackers found a way to bypass its core security functions. Think of it as finding a master key to a vault everyone thought was impenetrable. The exploit doesn't require physical access—just the right malicious code in the right place.

Why Crypto Holders Should Sweat

This chip isn't in some obscure device. It's in millions of smartphones globally. For anyone using mobile hot wallets or even certain exchange apps, the attack vector just widened. The flaw could allow bad actors to extract private keys or intercept transactions without a user ever knowing—until their wallet is empty.

The Irony of 'Secure' Hardware

Ledger, a company that sells hardware based on the 'secure element' premise, exposing a critical flaw in another form of secure hardware? The irony is thick. It's a stark reminder that in crypto, trust should be minimized and verified, not assumed. This revelation cuts through the marketing hype of many 'secure' mobile solutions.

The Bottom Line

The fix isn't a simple app update. It requires a firmware patch from the chip manufacturer, which then needs to be pushed by device makers and carriers—a process measured in months, if it happens at all for older models. In the meantime, the advice is classic and painful: consider your mobile device inherently compromised for high-value crypto operations. Sometimes the safest tech is the one you can physically disconnect—a lesson that, ironically, boosts the case for cold wallets. Another day, another reminder that in the race for convenience, security is often the first casualty. But hey, at least your phone's finance app still lets you buy fractional shares with a 1.5% fee.

Ledger warned about the serious implications of this discovery

“From malware that users could be tricked into installing on their machines, to fully remote, zero-click exploits commonly used by government-backed entities, there is simply no way to safely store and use one’s private keys on those devices,” they wrote.

This news arrives during a period when attacks targeting people who own cryptocurrency are becoming more frequent. A study released in July by Chainalysis showed that more than $2.17 billion has already been stolen from crypto services in 2025. That amount exceeds everything that was stolen throughout all of 2024.

Most cryptocurrency thefts happen through online methods like phishing schemes and fraudulent operations, rather than physical attacks. However, the research shows that physical vulnerabilities do exist.

The Donjon researchers found that once they figured out the exact moment to send the electromagnetic pulse, each try took roughly one second. Their success rate ranged from 0.1% to 1% per attempt, which meant they could completely take over a device within just a few minutes when working in laboratory settings.

Ledger, which makes the well-known Nano hardware wallets, stopped short of telling people to completely avoid using wallets on smartphones. However, the findings do point to a new way that both software creators and regular users could be targeted.

A cryptocurrency wallet is a program that holds a person’s public and private keys, allowing them to send, receive, and keep track of their digital money. Hardware wallets, sometimes called “cold wallets,” keep these private keys completely offline on a separate physical device that’s disconnected from the internet, protecting them from attacks that can reach phones or computers.

Software wallets, also known as “hot wallets,” are applications that let people store their digital money on different devices, but this leaves users vulnerable to hacking attempts and phishing operations.

MediaTek says Ledger’s fault-injection test is out of scope

MediaTek had responded to the discovery in a statement that Ledger included in their report. The company said that electromagnetic fault-injection attacks were considered “out of scope” for the MT6878 chip because it was built as a regular consumer product, not as a high-security component meant for financial systems or sensitive information.

“For products with higher hardware security requirements, such as hardware crypto wallets, we believe that they should be designed with appropriate countermeasures against EMFI attacks,” MediaTek stated.

Ledger emphasized that devices using the MT6878 chip will continue to have this vulnerability because the flaw exists in the unchangeable silicon material itself. The company stressed that secure-element chips remain essential for anyone who manages their own cryptocurrency or handles other sensitive security operations, as these specialized components are specifically built to resist both hardware and software attacks.

“Smartphones’ threat model, just like any piece of technology that can be lost or stolen, cannot reasonably exclude hardware attacks,” Ledger wrote. “But the SoCs they use are no more exempt from the effects of fault injection than microcontrollers are, and security should really ultimately rely on Secure Elements, especially for self-custody.”

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