Credit-card sized, four physical buttons, a small but crisp OLED display. EAL6+ vs EAL5+: Why Hardware Wallet Chip Certification Matters I spent three years trusting a Ledger Nano S before realizing I had no idea what "secure element" actually meant. The spec sheet said "CC EAL5+ certified" and I assumed that was good enough. Then I started researching hardware wallet attacks and discovered my assumptions were completely wrong. What Common Criteria EAL Ratings Actually Mean Common Criteria (CC) is an international security certification standard (ISO/IEC 15408) used to evaluate everything from smartcards to military hardware. The Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) scale runs from EAL1 to EAL7, but most consumer hardware lives in the EAL4–EAL6 range.…