$116 Million Bitcoin Heist Exposes Cold Wallet Vulnerability

A $116 million heist has rocked the cryptocurrency world after hackers breached one of the most secure storage systems for digital assets, known as cold wallets. The attack on a system called Coldcard took just 41 minutes to execute and resulted in the theft of $70 million.

The cybercriminals continued their assault, making off with an additional $46 million, according to data from blockchain intelligence firm Galaxy Research. Cold wallets are designed to be impenetrable, as they don't connect to the internet and store user keys offline, reducing the risk of unauthorized access.

However, the vulnerability that allowed this breach dates back to a 2021 software update, which inadvertently created predictable patterns in wallet seeds. This made it possible for attackers to try combinations on a regular computer until they found the correct one.