Ledger CTO Warns Hardware Wallet Security Must Evolve for the AI Era

ChainCatcher report, according to Decrypt, Ledger’s Chief Technology Officer Charles Guillemet said the Coldcard vulnerability incident exposed weaknesses in hardware wallet entropy generation and emphasized that AI is reshaping the landscape of cybersecurity defense and offense. Guillemet noted that the security model of hardware wallets “lives or dies by randomness,” and this event proved it at the highest cost. Ledger stated its hardware wallets were unaffected, as its mnemonic phrases are generated by a hardware random number generator within a certified secure element, with no software fallback path, producing a full 256-bit random number each time. Guillemet argued that open-source code, if not thoroughly reviewed, does not equate to security; AI enables attackers to scan code and identify vulnerabilities at machine speed, meaning defense must advance at the same pace—relying on secure design, hardware, and mathematics. Guillemet advises users to understand how their hardware wallet generates randomness and whether it has undergone independent certification when making a selection.