Topic Archive

#cryptography

8 Stories Found

Coins•Oct 19, 2026

Zcash Developers Plan Quantum-Resistant Upgrade to Protect ZEC Swap Privacy

Key Highlights Theoretical quantum computing attacks utilizing Shor’s algorithm threaten historical, Satoshi-era Bitcoin public keys currently exposed onchain. Google’s recent Willow quantum chip milestone demonstrates advancement in hardware components necessary for long-term quantum computation, accelerating industry mitigation efforts. Zakura has implemented an architectural safeguard for Zcash transactions across networks like NEAR, assigning distinct viewing keys ...

4 min readRead

Coins•Oct 17, 2026

‘Wow, it’s a real discovery’: Claude Cracks 25-Year NSA Number Mystery

Key Highlights: The mystery surrounding cryptographic seeds provided by the National Security Agency (NSA) in 1997 remains unsolved despite decades of suspicion and public scrutiny. Security researchers have long questioned whether the unexplained numbers contained an intentional backdoor, a fear amplified by Edward Snowden’s revelations regarding the NSA weakening standards like the Dual_EC_DRBG. Despite public-records ...

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Coins•Oct 16, 2026

Claude AI Solves NSA’s 25-Year Cryptography Seed Mystery

Key Highlights: An internal Claude research model at Anthropic solved a 25-year-old cryptographic enigma regarding the origin of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) 160-bit elliptic curve seeds in under 30 minutes. The investigation revealed the seeds were generated via the Unix pseudorandom generator lrand48 seeded with ordinary timestamps from 1997 and 1998, disproving rumors of ...

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Coins•Oct 16, 2026

Google Cuts Quantum Magic-State Errors 40-Fold on Willow

Key Highlights: Google Quantum AI demonstrated “magic state cultivation,” reducing logical error rates from roughly 0.44% down to an upper bound of about 0.01% on its 105-qubit Willow chip. While an experimental milestone for fault-tolerant computing, the 40-fold error reduction does not accelerate timelines for cracking cryptographic schemes like Bitcoin and Ethereum’s secp256k1 curve. The ...

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Coins•Oct 14, 2026

Coinbase, Holder of 5% of All Bitcoin, Urges Immediate Action on Quantum Threat

Key Highlights: Bitcoin relies on ECDSA and Schnorr signature schemes, which are secure against classical hardware but vulnerable to future quantum computing decryption. Google researchers estimate that a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC) capable of breaking public key cryptography could emerge by 2029. Coinbase warns that implementing post-quantum cryptography requires addressing network data limits, protecting ...

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Coins•Oct 8, 2026

Over 6 Million Bitcoin at Risk in Exposed Public Keys as AI Threat Warnings Mount

Key Highlights: More than 6 million Bitcoin—accounting for 31.2% of the circulating supply—currently sit behind exposed public keys onchain. Major platforms display vastly different exposure rates: Binance holds 83% of its Bitcoin behind visible public keys, while Coinbase sits at 10% and Fidelity at just 2%. The vulnerability risk has intensified following warnings from Ethereum ...

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$OpenAI Math Breakthroughs Trigger ‘bunker mode’ Warning From Bitcoin Researcher Justin Drake$

Coins•Oct 8, 2026

OpenAI Math Breakthroughs Trigger ‘bunker mode’ Warning From Bitcoin Researcher Justin Drake

Key Highlights: Ethereum researcher Justin Drake warned that rapid advances in AI-driven mathematical discovery could undermine elliptic-curve cryptography much sooner than anticipated. Drake cautioned that “In the worst case,” an effective break of the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) could arrive “in months, not years.” While OpenAI’s recent mathematics release showed no practical cryptographic ...

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Coins•Oct 7, 2026

Ethereum Developer Issues Urgent Warning: “All Cryptocurrency Holders Must Do This”

Key Highlights Ethereum researcher Justin Drake warned that the ECDSA digital signature algorithm could potentially be broken on classical hardware accelerated by AI breakthroughs, well ahead of the anticipated quantum “Q-Day.” In a worst-case scenario, large GPU clusters could derive private keys in roughly one week, putting exposed Bitcoin public keys and critical Web3 signing ...

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