Defcon is happening, a hacker convention and apparently someone is giving out hardware wallets.
This guy is giving away Ledgers and other wallets @defcon for free or very cheap.
@techengineer21
Company name literally CryptoHack.
Asked him if the devices are compromised, he said no.
🤔
People often are trolling in these hacker conventions to raise awareness about certain security issues, even with elaborate schemes such as this.
So, here’s the deal:
NEVER ACCEPT A USED HARDWARE WALLET. NEVER ACCEPT A FREE HARDWARE WALLET. WALLETS CAN BE CHIPPED, MEANING COMPROMISED.
Always buy directly from the source company. We’ll see large retail chains carrying hardware wallets more and more and that’s probably fine, but I would never use a wallet from them for significant amounts.
Trust me, it’s worth the extra shipping cost and the wait to buy directly from Trezor, Ledger, Bitbox and so on.
Even with wallet giveaways, only accept them if they ship from the parent company itself. When I won a Trezor wallet I confirmed the giveaway with Trezor and they guaranteed that they were indeed sending it to me, not the third party who was running the giveaway.
With my bitcoin workshops, I don’t carry the wallets we give away. We collect the order details, in itself an issue but there’s no other way, and we just email them to Trezor or Bitbox and they ship the wallet directly. It would have been easier to keep the wallets on me, sealed in their tamper-proof bag, but no.
We’re trying to teach security and self-custody here. Best practices are always maintained.
Again, don’t accept free or used hardware wallets. Thee are very cheap ones already. You should always buy from the parent company. Read the wallet guide to choose the one that’s best for you. The links send you to the parent companies themselves.