Reconstructing Hardware Wallet Exploits
Hardware wallet exploits have rarely been caused by broken cryptography but more often by subtle issues in system design, implementation, and assumptions. This workshop examines why these exploits were possible by reconstructing historical failures from publicly disclosed incidents across popular hardware wallets. Participants work with a simplified and deliberately vulnerable "toy wallet" on a constrained microcontroller to reproduce these conditions in a controlled environment and apply the defensive changes that mitigated them. Attendees leave with practical insight into how Bitcoin custody systems have broken in the past and how to reason about future exploit risks.