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How could the Coldcard vulnerability have been disclosed responsibly?

Bitcoin Reddit

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As a thought experiment, suppose a white-hat had been the first to discover the Coldcard RNG vulnerability. How could they possibly have disclosed it responsibly, given that weak seeds had already been generated?

A public warning would immediately create a race between legitimate owners and attackers (as happened in reality). Because the firmware source code is openly available, even a vague warning like “Coldcard-generated seeds may be vulnerable; move your BTC immediately” would immediately tell attackers where to look for the vulnerability and then exploit it.

You could instead warn Coinkite privately, but that would not solve the underlying problem. Even assuming Coinkite could be trusted to handle the information properly, it would have no better way to protect affected owners. It would eventually have to issue a public warning, creating the same race. “Silently” patching the vulnerability would effectively be the same as publicizing it, as the patch itself would identify the flaw.

Another alternative would be for the white-hat to sweep all the vulnerable funds first, but then how could they return them? Once the flaw is public, a signature from the compromised key no longer proves legitimate ownership, since an attacker can derive the same key.

Remaining silent would probably be the worst option, because more vulnerable seeds would continue to be generated.

There do not seem to be any good options here, but what would the least bad approach have been?

submitted by /u/2_plus_2_equals_5
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