Coinkite CEO NVK defended Coldcard's security reviews on Nov. 9 after the $116 million seed-generation exploit, arguing that a new AI model found a defect humans missed. Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr disputes that account, and James O'Beirne's earlier warnings have resurfaced.
NVK, posting on X, said at least 15 external reviews or research efforts touched Coldcard hardware, firmware, random-number generation tools and release controls before the defect emerged. He cited two paid third-party product reviews, one covering Mk4 in 2022 and another covering Q in 2024.
He also said Rob Ham's OpenAI Cybersecurity Harness review produced 85 candidate findings before the incident, and that several prompted fixes but the seed-generation defect was absent. NVK argued a new AI model found the defect, writing: "it took a new AI model to find what humans couldn’t".
Developers push back on the AI claim
Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr said he had privately shared findings with Coinkite and was now disclosing them publicly. He cautioned that he was not claiming every issue was definitely a bug or could be exploited, and described his examination as a quick look rather than a full audit.
Others questioned how Coinkite handled scrutiny. Alex Waltz accused the company and NVK of discouraging people from examining the code. Shinobi defended NVK, arguing that reviewers had examined the entropy system without identifying the defect.
James O'Beirne's older posts also resurfaced. He wrote on Aug. 4 that he began examining Coldcard's firmware in May 2025 to establish where its random-number generator obtained entropy, and that he raised concerns about hardcoded constants in the libngu library's software fallback. According to his account, he was told the configuration was correct for physical devices.
What the exploit involved
TRM Labs' Aug. 5 analysis described roughly 1,816 BTC stolen from more than 5,200 addresses across four waves beginning July 30. The report traced the vulnerability to a March 2021 build configuration error that selected a weak software random-number generator.
On older devices, effective seed strength fell to as little as 40 bits from an intended 128, allowing attackers to reconstruct keys without physical access.
Coinkite's postmortem is still pending
Coinkite's security page says a separate detailed technical report remains in preparation. The page distinguishes targeted independent checks from a complete audit of every corrected firmware binary.
The current recommended releases are 5.6.3 for Mk4/Mk5 and 1.5.3Q for Q. Coinkite's advisory says firmware updates cannot repair existing affected seeds, and its migration steps call for a new seed, a verified backup and a small test transfer before moving the remaining funds.
Source: crypto.news
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