New Firmware Version 1.6 Available for Ledger Nano S

We’re thrilled to announce the release of the Ledger Nano S firmware version 1.6, which brings security and cryptographic enhancements as well as many improvements in user-experience. 

One key update that we’re really excited about: with firmware 1.6, you’ll be able to install more applications on your Ledger Nano S!

We highly recommend all our users to update their Nano S by following these steps. 

Important note: the firmware update will be released progressively. If you don’t see it available in your Ledger Live application, don’t worry. This means you will be able to perform it slightly later. 

Thank you to all Ledger Beta Testers for their participation in this campaign and their help.

Increased Capacity

Today, Ledger Nano S users can install 3 to 7 apps of the current market cap’s Top 20 at the same time (e.g. BTC, ETH, XRP, BCH, LTC at the same time on a single device), or up to 20 dependent apps on their device depending on the app size (see here for examples of app combinations).

With firmware version 1.6 we have reduced the firmware size, allowing users to install more cryptocurrency applications.  After updating, your device should have the same amount of space for apps as with firmware version 1.4.2.  Some examples of app combinations:

As a reminder, deleting an app does not impact your cryptocurrency holdings: when the app is reinstalled, the original balance is retrieved.

A Better User-Experience

Significant improvements have been made in this new firmware version to improve the user-experience.

The Ledger Nano S interface is now more consistent and closer to that of the Ledger Nano X: you will always have to press a single button to select an item (left or right) and press both buttons simultaneously to validate or cancel any action.

The setup and restore procedures have also been improved, with additional instructions and easier flows to help you manage your device.

The options to rotate or invert the screen have been removed in order to make the firmware smaller and increase device capacity.

Some bugs have also been fixed such as the WebUSB support (which was not working properly with firmware version 1.5.5) or Windows 8 USB packet. 

Keep Improving Your Security

The Ledger Donjon team is continuously working on improving our devices security by attacking our products. This work has led to some improvements which are included in the firmware version 1.6 release: 

• Hardening PIN code entry by randomizing the order of digits and symbols to mitigate a potential attacker from counting button clicks to guess the PIN code
• Added screen jitter and partial screen inversion so that a potential attacker cannot guess the screen contents by measuring the power consumption of the device (learn more)
• Starting from firmware version 1.6.0, the microcontroller (MCU) will be updated by the Secure Element, further increasing the security of the update process and improving the user experience

Some cryptographic additions and improvements have also been included in this firmware version:

• Added CTR mode as available block cipher mode
• Added Stark 256 curve, used for some zero-knowledge proofs
• Enhanced computation of Schnorr and EdDSA curve points
• More flexible hmac/hash engine used for key computations
• Faster execution of the SHA256 hash algorithm

Additional features

Advanced Privacy setting:
The feature currently allows to restrict a unique wallet identifier queried by Samsung Blockchain SDK. This “privacy” setting also paves the way for future privacy enhancements such as systematic approval of third party calls for a public key.

A new project allowing developers to test and run apps without any hardware device has just been released: Speculos (https://github.com/LedgerHQ/speculos). More information here.

We recommend all our users to install this latest version to make the most of the improvements it brings.

If you encounter any issues during your firmware update, please refer to this article.