Up to $1 billion stored in early Bitcoin wallets may be at risk due to "Randstorm" vulnerability

While trying to help a Bitcoin holder who lost their password, researchers at Unciphered discovered a major flaw in the way early Bitcoin wallets had been created. Thanks to a flaw in an open source software library called BitcoinJS, which was later incorporated into many wallet software projects to generate Bitcoin wallets with random keys, wallets created prior to 2016 may be vulnerable to cracking. Wallets created before March 2012 are at particular risk, as the roughly 6% of those that are vulnerable (and which hold a combined ~55,000 BTC, or ~$100 million) could be cracked without requiring major computing resources.

Unciphered worked with various wallet providers to contact people whose wallets may be vulnerable, though ultimately it is up to those wallet holders to secure their funds by creating new wallets and transferring their tokens. Unciphered also noted that some Dogecoin, Litecoin, and Zcash wallets may be vulnerable due to shared code.