(Image credit: Joje Mendes) Score one for the safety-minded and cryptographic hardware checks. Joje Mendes, a Brazilian cybersecurity professional, almost got bitten by a sophisticated hardware-and-software phishing attack, in the form of a fake Ledger Nano S+ cryptocurrency wallet . The only barrier between Past's virtual currency and the device's remote operators was Ledger's software, which verified that it was running on legitimate hardware. Go deeper with TH Premium: CPU True to the unfortunately expected form, after the device arrived, Mendes noticed it was "clearly" a counterfeit, a fact verified by the Ledger software, which marked it as non-genuine. True to his profession, Mendes decided to tear apart the device instead of tossing it, and found quite an elaborate scheme at work — one that's likely catching other unsuspecting users off guard.…