Coinkite Coldcard Wallets Hacked: 1,816 BTC Stolen in Hardware Exploit

A hardware wallet exploit has stolen over 1,816 BTC from users of Coinkite's Coldcard wallets. The attack began on July 30 and targeted people holding bitcoin on affected devices.

The issue was with how the devices generated private keys, using a random number generator with very low randomness since 2021. This made every seed generated on the affected firmware vulnerable to being guessed, likened by River to flipping a weighted coin that always falls on heads.

River stressed that the flaw was isolated to the hardware, not the Bitcoin protocol or network itself. The firm noted that bitcoin's price stayed flat in the weeks following the attack, suggesting no damage to its value proposition.