French crypto firm Ledger warns of AI-driven security risks

Ledger, a French cryptocurrency company with unicorn status (a start-up valued at over $1 billion), is warning that artificial intelligence is changing the security landscape. The firm, which makes devices for securing crypto holdings, wants a bigger role in digital security. Chief Technology Officer Charles Guillemet spoke about the issue in an interview with France 24.

According to him, finding and exploiting vulnerabilities now costs almost nothing. The wider security industry therefore has to work out how to raise the bar so high that breaking into systems becomes very difficult. Guillemet believes hardware is part of the answer.

A new device, Ledger Atom

The company is rolling out a new device, Ledger Atom, designed to better protect user data. Guillemet describes it as a physical device that looks like a phone but contains Ledger's own hardware features rather than the same architecture as an ordinary handset. He compares it to the security token some banks provide for authenticating customers, but with a screen and a generic design that can support any kind of use case.

Securing supply chains and hardware

Guillemet says Ledger is tightening the security of its distribution chains and hardware. The reason is an incident in which the company found that some of its devices had been tampered with, leading to the loss of about $90 million in cryptocurrency. Ledger Atom includes an improved tamper-detection mechanism, with specific technology that can tell whether a device has been modified.

Crypto as the main market

For now, the company's main market is crypto, because the stakes there are very high. Several trillion are secured on the blockchain, and Ledger estimates that around 20 percent of that is protected by its technology.