Some of the earliest Bitcoin wallets could be particularly open to hacking
Cryptocurrency recovery company Deciphered has warned of a security storm on the blockchain, with early adopters likely to be particularly affected.
Specifically, crypto wallets created between 2011 and 2015 may be vulnerable to Randstorm, an exploit that can gain unauthorized access to crypto wallets by recovering passwords.
Unciphered reports that between $1.2 and 2.1 billion worth of Bitcoin could be at risk, but warns that even this figure could be a conservative estimate.
Early Bitcoin adopters could be at risk
The report warns that early adopters are most at risk of losing, as the cryptocurrency is currently worth more than $37,000. By the end of 2015, it was worth just over $300, meaning wallets may have grown significantly in that time.
“Randstorm() is a term we coined to describe a collection of bugs, design decisions, and API changes that, when brought into contact with each other, together reduce the quality of random numbers generated by web browsers of a certain era. produced, decrease dramatically (2011-2015),” it added.
The solution is simple in principle, but many users will not be happy that a simple password change is not enough. Instead, Unciphered suggests that anyone who may be at risk should move their crypto to a new wallet, which it says is good housekeeping if done periodically anyway.
While wallet generation is free, transferring Bitcoin will incur a fee. Either way, paying a fee would be a small price to pay compared to losing the contents of an entire wallet.
Those who may be affected can check their public key at the Key hemorrhage website, owned by Unciphered, to see if their wallet is vulnerable to known exploits.