Ledger unveils $899 Atom phone as supply-chain attack steals estimated $90 million

Pascal Gauthier, Ledger’s chief executive, said customers had long asked the company for a Ledger phone. On Thursday in Paris, the company answered with the Ledger Atom, an Android-based security and privacy device that is also arriving at an awkward moment for a business built on keeping cryptocurrency out of reach of thieves.

The Atom will cost $899 and is due to be available from next summer. Reservations have opened with a $100 refundable deposit.

Ledger first disclosed a supply-chain incident on Oct. 9. Attackers had bought genuine devices, added hidden spyware intended to capture passwords, then put the wallets back into circulation through resellers in Southeast Asia.

The implant could read a user’s 24-word recovery phrase from the wallet screen during setup and transmit it through a cellular connection. Hardware implants in some Ledger devices were used to steal an estimated $90 million in cryptocurrency.

Users reported fund losses from devices bought through a Malaysian reseller. All confirmed cases involve devices sold through CryptoBilis, a reseller in Southeast Asia.

On Tuesday, Ledger told resellers across Southeast Asia and Hong Kong to stop selling its devices while it investigated. German retail group MediaMarktSaturn also removed Ledger wallets from its shelves.

Ledger published its investigation on Thursday, setting out how attackers had compromised genuine devices, installed spyware and returned them to resale channels in Southeast Asia.

The Atom is Ledger’s answer, or at least an attempt at one. It uses the Android Open Source Project alongside a Secure Element running Ledger OS. Its display and touch controls are physically isolated from Android.

When a user approves a transaction, the device enters Secure Mode, in which Ledger OS controls the whole screen and turns off the camera, microphone and other sensors.

It also has sensors designed to alert users if the casing around the secure element has been breached or if the screen has been detached. Charles Guillemet, Ledger’s chief technology officer, wrote that the screen was Atom’s most important component because many serious attacks rely on faking what a user sees. He described an active shield around the device’s secure zone intended to spot tampering before it reaches its owner.

The device has a 6.77-inch AMOLED display running at 60Hz. Ledger plans to sell it only through its official website.

Solana Mobile has named Ledger as its first hardware expansion partner. A Seeker app combining the Solana dApp Store and a wallet will be installed on the Atom, and more than 1,500 dApps from that store are slated to reach the device.

For Ledger, the launch places a new app-capable device beside an active investigation into devices that were physically altered before reaching buyers. The company has halted sales in the affected markets, while the scale of the attack beyond confirmed cases remains unclear.