Oddbean

The exploding pagers story is significant on a number of levels. On a purely cold-hearted military tactical level, it was a brilliant ploy. On a human level, it was a horrific new form of terrorism pretending to be counter-terrorism. On a technological level, it exposes the vulnerability of supply chain attacks, and the novel ability to weaponize everyday communications devices. Be careful who you buy your tech from. https://image.nostr.build/36829be81b4f677cf28e228aed50b36f0acad4f480575f855ef02015d76807a8.jpg

Yeah if it is just the wallet exploding, it would be more of a nuisance than a danger. Who is carrying their hardware wallet on their person all the time? Keep your keys separate and restore to another device.

Explosives are not the only way of interfering with the supply chain although I recognize that coinkite goes to great pains to identify and prevent any sort of shenanigans. The example I was thinking of was a gov demanding that a large hardware wallet provider ship through them. Which is, I presume, what happened with the pagers.

Fair point but they have sort of figured that one out too as they send it to you direct and put it in a sealed bag with a code on it which matches the device. I am sure the spooks can tamper with it and could do a good job of obfuscating the fact they have done it to you specifically especially if you are on a list somewhere but how many coldcards do they send out a week? It's sort of getting into the realm of the improbable

Not a very likely attack vector because most people don't hold their Bitcoin wallets on them all the time. Putting devices in some kind of scanner that can check for explosives would be the real defense imo.

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In this case, small explosives were added to the devices. It is possible that a device could be made to explode just by overheating the battery inside, but the time it takes to catch fire would vary depending on how much battery power was left. So for instant explosions, explosives are needed beyond just the normal internal battery.

So the good news is you'd have warning before a battery-based attack goes off. But the bad news is, it could still be used to start a fire. But more good news is, a small device like a phone can still have its fire-starting potential contained fairly easily by keeping an eye on it and keeping it somewhere fireproof when you're not keeping an eye on it. But more bad news is, people who live in apartment buildings can't keep an eye on every device their neighbors have. But more good news is, major corporations wouldn't want to take the liability of burning down apartment buildings by allowing battery protection security to be compromised like that. But more bad news is, Samsung already took the time to rig some phones to start fires about 8 years ago, while also being known as the kingpin of the global battery market, so the signal has already been sent that no battery company on earth would ever necessarily give a fuck about protecting customers and insurance companies seeing that warning in the past are probably already prepared to cover whatever liability will emerge from future supply chain issues.

You cannot, because it's the protective chip that would be compromised, not the battery itself. But in this case, they simply planted bombs in the devices, so you could use X-Ray or something to check the internals against normal factory condition.