Kraken Chief Security Officer: Coldcard Vulnerability Leads to Over $90 Million in Bitcoin Stolen, Hardware Wallet Industry Testing Mechanisms Require Urgent Overhaul

According to Cointelegraph, Coinkite, the manufacturer of Coldcard hardware wallets, disclosed that its devices have contained a random number generator (RNG) vulnerability persisting for up to five years since March 2021. The vulnerability stemmed from a firmware upgrade that mistakenly routed wallet seed generation to a less secure MicroPython pseudo-random number generator (PRNG), rather than the originally designed true random number generator (TRNG). Since code reviews only verified the existence of TRNG code without confirming whether it was actually invoked, the vulnerability remained undetected for a long period. To date, over 4,500 addresses have been compromised, with nearly $90 million worth of Bitcoin stolen. Kraken Chief Security Officer Nick Percoco stated that this incident should serve as a "wake-up call" for the hardware wallet industry, calling for the introduction of independent third-party testing mechanisms to mandate verification of whether the entropy sources actually invoked by production firmware are certified. Coinkite has suspended all device shipments and destroyed affected inventory after confirming the vulnerability, and stated it will cooperate with law enforcement agencies across multiple countries to trace the responsible parties.