Coldcard Hack Exposes Vulnerability in Crypto Cold Wallets
A recent cyberattack on Coldcard, a system used for cold wallets, has resulted in the theft of $116 million worth of Bitcoin. The attack occurred within 41 minutes and was carried out by exploiting a vulnerability that dates back to a software update in 2021.
The hackers took advantage of a predictable pattern-based method used by some wallets to generate seed words, which are then used to create private keys for managing funds. This allowed them to try possible combinations on a regular computer until they found the right one, effectively emptying the wallets without needing malware or physical access.
The incident is part of a larger trend in the crypto ecosystem, where theft occurs through fewer but increasingly sophisticated attacks. According to Chainalysis, $3.4 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen overall in 2025, with the Bybit attack accounting for $1.5 billion of that total.