Glossary
Hardware Wallet
A dedicated physical device (Ledger, Trezor) that stores private keys in tamper-resistant hardware and signs transactions offline.
A hardware wallet keeps the private key inside a secure element that never exposes it to the host computer. The host sends an unsigned transaction to the device; the device displays the relevant fields on its own screen, asks for physical confirmation, then returns a signed transaction.
This defeats malware that scrapes seed phrases from disk or memory. It does not defeat blind-signing attacks where the user confirms a call whose intent they don't understand — which is why "clear signing" support is the next frontier for hardware wallets.