By Susie Violet Ward · Forbes · 31 July 2026
A firmware flaw in Coldcard devices was linked to the theft of roughly 594 bitcoin, worth about $38 million, from around 500 wallets. The fault weakened the generation of seed phrases on affected Mk3 devices, reducing the effective security of keys that users believed were safely generated.
Days later, attention turned to Telegram after reporting found that the app sends an unencrypted identifier capable of following a device across networks. The two cases involve very different technologies, but both expose the gap between assuming a product is secure and knowing how it actually works. The article looks at hardware security, encryption, open source code and the growing role of AI in finding vulnerabilities.