That would work on an already configured wallet that you stole but the skill level required is orders of magnitude higher than what's on display here. I know all of the theory on that one but I would probably not be able to pull that off.

The best I've done is to modify a potted chip by very careful thermal imaging to figure out where the part was that blocked the feature I wanted to unlock (market segmentation) and then drill through the case to a depth just higher than the chip. You'd have definitely been able to spot the difference. This was at the millimeter level. Recently there was a post about a group doing this at the chip level, which I thought was extremely impressive, and again, even with the recipe out there duplicating it would still be very hard.

> The best I've done is to modify a potted chip by very careful thermal imaging to figure out where the part was that blocked the feature I wanted to unlock (market segmentation) and then drill through the case to a depth just higher than the chip.

Sounds like a good approach when you only have a single (or just a few) of the devices so you need to be careful.

With hardware wallets (aka substantial incentive), then the attackers could order a bunch of them for sacrificial zero-ing in the exact places to drill with a CNC/microscope/etc.

Xbox Kamikaze hack (How a drill defeated the Xbox 360’s console security)

https://www.xda-developers.com/how-drill-defeated-the-xbox-3...