Reverse engineering a Ledger Nano X hardware implant
Writing on core-jmp.org, oxfemale walks through Joe Grand’s HARDWEAR.IO 2026 talk in Santa Clara, where Grand tore down a real hardware implant found inside a counterfeit Ledger Nano X.
Executive Summary
Writing on core-jmp.org, oxfemale walks through Joe Grand’s HARDWEAR.IO 2026 talk in Santa Clara, where Grand tore down a real hardware implant found inside a counterfeit Ledger Nano X. The unit came from a Lazada seller in Thailand and surfaced in an August 2025 Reddit post. The implant doesn’t touch the Secure Element. It sits next to it. When the wallet displays the 24 BIP-39 recovery words, those glyphs cross the OLED’s SPI bus in the clear.
Open Silicon & Gate-Level Hardware Inspection
From a silicon and hardware engineering viewpoint: - **Interface Neutrality:** Mitigates dependency on proprietary BSPs, empowering open toolchains to address hardware directly. - **Supply Chain Verification:** Schematics and open pinouts allow deterministic audits against silicon errata. - **Lifecycle Decoupling:** Decouples physical hardware utility from commercial vendor end-of-life obsolescence.
Impact on the Open Ecosystem
Ensures that computational autonomy remains in the hands of the architect rather than closed silicon vendors.