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A 2021 shortcut

Forbes traces the root cause to a March 2021 firmware build where the device stopped using strong randomness and followed a predictable pattern.

crypto
03

Attackers copied the pattern

Once the shortcut was understood, attackers reproduced it on their own computers, guessed candidate seeds, and checked which unlocked real wallets.

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04

Drained in minutes

Because the search space was so reduced, some wallets were swept in a matter of minutes once a vulnerable seed was found.

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05

The takeaway

A key is only as safe as the randomness behind it. Strong entropy is the assumption Bitcoin security rests on, and here it failed.

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