An in-depth analysis of Qubic’s “Weak Seed Phrase” vulnerability

The encryption flaw that led to 1,404 Qubic wallets being hacked is a costly lesson in developing decentralized applications:

• The flaw wasn’t in the blockchain: The Qubic blockchain continued to operate perfectly, and hackers neither altered its data nor carried out a 51% attack, according to BeInCrypto. The flaw was in the wallet generator.

• The lesson about the Entropy function: When users clicked “Create New Wallet” in Safari or an older iOS app, the system called a faulty random number generator. Instead of generating countless impossible combinations that would be infeasible to search, the algorithm generated a set of patterned, limited character strings. Hackers only needed an ordinary computer running a brute-force script to easily guess users’ highly confidential keys.

🔬 The reality of the Willow quantum chip’s power

Although the news that Google’s Willow chip was published in the journal Science has caused concern, cryptography experts maintain that the crypto market remains safe in the short term:

• Hardware gap: The current Willow chip has made major progress in reducing error rates thanks to its 105-qubit architecture. But breaking into the Bitcoin network would require a quantum computer with millions of stable, operational physical qubits.

• Time to prepare: Technology experts estimate that humanity needs at least another 10 to 15 years to optimize quantum hardware to the point where it poses a threat to cryptocurrencies. In the meantime, major networks such as Bitcoin and Ethereum will have ample time to upgrade to quantum-resistant signature systems through hard forks.