How to Protect Yourself From This Massive Ongoing Cryptocurrency Attack
It seems that whenever someone comes up with a way to protect your digital data, hackers immediately find a way to break it. Today’s example: criminals stole over $130 million in cryptocurrency from users of offline hardware wallets—devices specifically designed for securely storing Bitcoin.
Hackers are attacking cold crypto wallets.
As TechCrunch reports , several hacker groups have gained access to Coldcard cryptocurrency wallets and are continuing to steal funds. These wallets, created by Coinkite, are considered “cold,” meaning they are not connected to the internet or any other devices, and users’ keys or seed phrases are stored entirely offline. In contrast, “hot” wallets are connected to the internet and include apps and browser extensions.
Hot wallets are generally considered more dangerous in terms of hacking, theft, malware, and ransomware, but this latest attack exploited a vulnerability in the Coldcard seed generation process, leading to the compromise of users’ cold wallets. The vulnerability made the seed phrases predictable, allowing the attackers to brute-force the victims’ passwords—essentially guessing them through trial and error—and gain access to their wallets.
Between January and July of this year, hackers carried out more than 200 crypto attacks , resulting in $972 million in losses. This represents an increase in the number of attacks, but a significantly lower amount of funds stolen compared to the first six months of 2025.
How to protect your cryptocurrency wallet
According to Coinkite’s security advisory , the vulnerability has been patched for all affected firmware versions, so users should first install the available updates for their devices from the official download pages (links are provided in the advisory). Users should also migrate their wallets to the new seed phrase, following the specific instructions in the advisory.
While using a cold wallet should provide greater protection, you may also want to consider a diversified cryptocurrency storage strategy and keep a minimal amount of assets in hot wallets at a time. This way, if one is hacked, it won’t leave all the others vulnerable.