ZEC drops 30% after Anthropic AI finds Zcash counterfeit vulnerability
6 hours ago
- #Zcash
- #Cryptocurrency
- #Security Vulnerability
- ZEC price dropped over 30% to $410 after details of a critical counterfeiting bug in Zcash's Orchard pool were revealed.
- Security engineer Taylor Hornby discovered the bug on May 29 with the help of Claude Opus AI; it allowed unlimited counterfeit ZEC minting via a false input vulnerability.
- The bug existed since May 2022, raising concerns about past exploitation, though no formal proof of illegal minting exists.
- Shielded Labs and Zcash developers are working on a network upgrade to verify ZEC supply integrity and prove no counterfeits exist.
- Similar vulnerabilities have occurred in Zcash before, such as in 2018, and are noted as a theoretical risk in many privacy protocols.