MediaMarktSaturn halts Ledger sales amid spyware concerns

One of Europe’s biggest electronics retailers has stopped selling one of crypto’s best-known security products. MediaMarktSaturn, the parent company of MediaMarkt, suspended sales of all Ledger hardware wallets across 11 countries and more than 1,000 stores as of October 13, 2026. The trigger was a set of user reports describing unauthorized hardware modifications in Ledger devices bought from its outlets. A device sold to protect your crypto allegedly arrived with extra hardware designed to steal it. What customers found inside the box The most alarming report came from a customer in Germany. That buyer described a hardware implant capable of capturing a user’s 24-word recovery phrase and sending it out over LTE. That combination is about as bad as it gets. A hardware wallet exists largely to keep the recovery phrase offline. An implant that quietly pipes it out over a mobile network defeats the entire point of the product. The German report prompted an investigation tied to CryptoBilis, a reseller based in Southeast Asia. Ledger’s security team has confirmed that unauthorized implants are present in selected units sold by CryptoBilis. According to Ledger’s findings, the implants ...