Tampered Hardware Wallet

A tampered hardware wallet is a device that reached its owner after an attacker had access to it — intercepted in transit, resold, or supplied through a listing that was never the manufacturer. The commonest form needs no electronics at all: the package contains a recovery phrase already written on a card, with instructions presenting it as the device's own phrase, so the owner funds a wallet whose keys the attacker has held from the start. Other variants load modified firmware or replace the internals. The defences are procedural rather than technical. Buy from the manufacturer or an authorised reseller and never from a general marketplace or a private seller; run the setup yourself; expect the device to generate a new recovery phrase and display it on its own screen; and treat any pre-supplied phrase, any request to type in a phrase you were given, and any instruction sheet that skips generation as proof that the device must not be used.