Third-Party Risk Comes Home to Roost: Ledger's Global-e Breach
Ledger customer data exposed through Global-e breach. No funds stolen, but names and addresses compromised. What affected users need to know.
Thirty percent of data breaches now involve third-party vendors—double last year's figure. For Ledger customers waking up to breach notification emails on January 5, 2026, that statistic has become deeply personal. The cryptocurrency hardware wallet company confirmed that customer data was exposed after attackers compromised Global-e, the payment processor handling transactions for Ledger's online store. No wallet funds were stolen, no recovery phrases exposed. But for users who've already weathered Ledger's notorious 2020 breach, the news lands with a familiar, unwelcome weight.
What Happened
Global-e, an Israeli-based cross-border e-commerce platform serving over 1,400 brands including Adidas, Disney, and Marks & Spencer, detected unusual activity in its cloud environment. Forensic investigation revealed unauthorized access to customer order data from multiple retailers, Ledger among them.
The attackers accessed names, postal addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, and order details (order numbers, products purchased, prices paid). Payment card information and account credentials were not involved. Neither, critically, were wallet recovery phrases or private keys—Ledger's devices remain self-custodial, meaning Global-e never possessed that data in the first place.
Global-e stated it immediately isolated affected systems upon discovery and retained independent forensic experts. The company hasn't disclosed exactly when the breach occurred or how many customers were affected across its client portfolio.
Who's Affected
Customers who purchased directly from Ledger.com using Global-e as the "Merchant of Record" are potentially impacted. Purchases through other channels (Amazon, authorized resellers) weren't processed through Global-e's systems.
Ledger hasn't specified the total number of affected users, though the company confirmed it wasn't the only brand compromised. Anyone who received a notification email from Global-e should assume their name and contact information were accessed.
The exposed information doesn't include anything that grants access to cryptocurrency holdings. Recovery phrases, private keys, and blockchain balances weren't part of the compromised dataset. But the information that was exposed—names tied to hardware wallet purchases—carries its own particular risks in the cryptocurrency space.
Why It Matters
This breach arrives against an increasingly grim backdrop. According to the 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, third-party breaches have doubled year-over-year. SecurityScorecard's analysis of 1,000 breaches found at least 36% originated from third-party compromises. Remediation costs for supply chain breaches now average $4.91 million.
Ledger's history makes this incident especially fraught. The company's 2020 breach exposed approximately 272,000 customer records—names, emails, phone numbers, and home addresses. That data was subsequently dumped publicly on hacking forums. Victims reported persistent phishing campaigns, extortion attempts, and in extreme cases, physical threats. Some received professionally designed physical letters instructing them to scan QR codes and surrender their recovery phrases. As recently as January 2025, Ledger co-founder David Balland was kidnapped from his home in France; attackers severed one of his fingers while demanding ransom.
The crypto community has developed a grim term for this kind of attack: the "$5 wrench attack." When criminals know who owns significant cryptocurrency holdings and where they live, no amount of cryptographic security matters against physical coercion.
Technical Breakdown
The breach pattern here is depressingly familiar. Global-e operates cloud-based systems that aggregate sensitive customer data from hundreds of retailers. By necessity, this creates a high-value target: compromise one platform, access data from 1,400+ brands.
From an architectural perspective, the failure point wasn't Ledger's wallet security or even their own website infrastructure. The vulnerability existed in data that had to flow through a third-party system to complete e-commerce transactions. Global-e requires customer names, addresses, and order details to perform its core function: handling checkout, localization, taxes, and compliance across 200+ countries.
The specific attack vector hasn't been publicly disclosed, though the company referenced suspicious activity in its "cloud environment." Cloud infrastructure compromises often involve misconfigured access controls, credential theft, or exploitation of unpatched vulnerabilities. SecurityScorecard's research indicates technology products and services account for 75% of third-party breach origins.
What's architecturally significant is that Global-e possessed the exposed data because the system required it. Names and addresses aren't stored as a convenience—they're operationally necessary for international e-commerce. The data existed in Global-e's systems because the business model demanded it.
This is the fundamental tension in vendor relationships: third parties need data to provide their services, but that data becomes an attack surface outside the primary organization's control.
What This Means for Readers
Anyone affected should treat this as an elevated phishing risk. Attackers now possess verified information that confirms specific individuals own Ledger hardware wallets. Expect convincing emails, text messages, and potentially physical mail referencing your actual name, purchase history, and order numbers.
Ledger and Global-e have emphasized that neither company will ever ask for your 24-word recovery phrase. Any communication requesting these words—regardless of how official it appears—is fraudulent. Recovery phrases should never be entered anywhere except directly on the hardware device during initial setup or recovery.
The secondary risk involves data aggregation. Breach databases get combined, cross-referenced, and resold. Information from this incident might eventually merge with data from the 2020 breach or other compromises, building increasingly detailed profiles of cryptocurrency holders.
For high-value holders, the physical security implications deserve serious consideration. Previous Ledger breaches have contributed to real-world targeting of crypto owners.
Protection Strategies
Assume the phishing is coming. Over the next several months, watch for sophisticated attempts that reference your specific Ledger purchase. Bookmark Ledger's official support page and navigate there directly rather than clicking links in emails. Enable two-factor authentication on your email accounts—if attackers compromise your email, they can reset passwords on other services.
Use Clear Sign and Transaction Check features. Ledger's recommendation to enable Clear Sign transactions allows you to verify exactly what you're signing on your device's display, rather than trusting a potentially compromised computer screen.
Consider operational security for future hardware wallet purchases. Blockchain researcher ZachXBT's suggestion—using fake personal information when buying hardware wallets—has merit. A disposable email address, a PO Box or mail forwarding service, and a prepaid card create separation between your identity and your crypto holdings. Not everyone needs this level of operational security, but for significant holdings, the friction is worth the protection.
Evaluate your third-party exposure. This breach illustrates a structural problem: data you give to one company flows to vendors you've never heard of. Where possible, minimize the personal information you provide to e-commerce platforms. Some organizations adopt privacy architectures that fundamentally limit data collection—approaches sometimes called "zero analytics" that simply don't accumulate the data that could be breached. These designs eliminate certain attack surfaces entirely by avoiding data retention in the first place.
Monitor for downstream effects. Set up alerts on your email address through breach notification services. Watch for unexpected authentication attempts on your accounts. If your physical address was exposed in either this breach or the 2020 incident, consider whether home security upgrades are warranted given your holdings.
Looking Forward
Third-party risk isn't going away. Modern e-commerce requires vendors, and vendors require data. The companies best positioned to weather this reality are those questioning what data truly needs to exist—and what can remain uncollected, unprocessed, and therefore unexposable.
For Ledger customers specifically, this is a reminder that wallet security and purchase security are separate problems. Your recovery phrase can be flawless while your personal information circulates through systems you never directly consented to use. The hardware wallet industry has largely solved the first problem. The second problem—protecting customer identity and preventing targeting—remains stubbornly unsolved.
Anyone affected by this breach should take practical precautions without panic. The exposed information, while sensitive, doesn't compromise funds directly. Vigilance against phishing, healthy skepticism of unsolicited communications, and thoughtful operational security will mitigate most of the resulting risk.