Pascal Gauthier, CEO of hardware crypto wallet maker Ledger, said in an interview with Bloomberg that everyone will get hacked sooner or later, and that advances in AI will only make hackers’ jobs easier.
“Perfect security doesn’t exist. That goes for Ledger and everyone else,” he said.
But there’s a catch: in the most recent case, the attackers didn’t need AI at all.
In October, it emerged that modified Ledger Nano X devices with a hidden hardware implant were being sold through a reseller called CryptoBilis. The implant intercepted the seed phrase displayed during setup and sent it to the hackers, which let them drain 324 wallets and steal at least $102M.
Did the Threat Come from AI?
In the interview, Gauthier said AI is already helping hackers pull off more sophisticated attacks, and that quantum technology could create new problems for cryptographic security down the line.
He believes keeping crypto in your own hands is still safer than trusting centralized platforms with it. He pointed to recent hacks of major exchanges, including Binance.
“The whole industry needs to join forces against hackers,” Gauthier said.
Yet in October, attackers compromised Ledger wallets without any help from AI. According to the investigation, they spent several months buying genuine devices, opening them up, installing hidden electronic components to intercept recovery phrases, and then putting them back on the market.
A similar threat has also surfaced at Trezor. On October 30, the company said a customer had contacted it, claiming there was a foreign electronic component inside a Trezor Safe 5 bought through the same reseller.
Our Take
What bothers us about Gauthier’s remarks is the framing itself. A maker of secure wallets comes out and tells buyers: sooner or later you’ll get hacked, because artificial intelligence is getting smarter. It sounds convincing, sure, but what exactly are we buying then? Protection for our funds, or just a chance to last longer than everyone else?
Companies are slyly trying to distance themselves from old security problems that hackers are now uncovering with the technology they have. AI is everywhere, which makes it a convenient explanation for their real vulnerabilities and holes in protocols and infrastructure.
Of course, artificial intelligence can make attacks more powerful. But the incident that hit them just recently shows that all it takes is access to a device somewhere in the supply chain to plant a malicious component. No AI required. What you need is a crafty guy who worms his way into the chain and solders in a tiny implant that activates once the whole batch has shipped around the world.
Crypto taught us to trust no one and depend on no one, yet now we have to take a wallet seller’s word for it. In other words, you can still keep your funds yourself and never connect to anything, but the hardware wallet sitting in the middle still depends on a bunch of factors: the manufacturer, the logistics, the reseller, and the firmware.
Security no longer rests on a technical guarantee; it’s turning into a subscription to an endless arms race. And before scaring the industry with new threats, crypto companies should first plug all their old holes, preferably not with a Band-Aid or duct tape.
