A flaw in a hardware wallet’s random-number generation has been linked to the rapid theft of 594 BTC, a haul valued at about $38 million, in what appears to have been a 25-minute sweep, according to CoinDesk.
The issue centered on a randomness bug that undermined the security of seed creation. Seed phrases are intended to be effectively unguessable, but in this case the defect appears to have made them easier to predict than users would reasonably expect from a hardware wallet. That kind of failure can be especially damaging because seed material is the foundation for controlling bitcoin holdings.
CoinDesk reported that the theft unfolded quickly, with the funds drained over roughly 25 minutes. The pace of the sweep suggests the attacker was able to act decisively once the vulnerability was identified or exploited. The report did not provide additional details on the wallet maker, the affected users, or whether any of the funds had been recovered.
Hardware wallets are widely used because they keep private keys offline, reducing exposure to remote attacks. But the episode underscores that security depends not only on keeping keys off connected devices, but also on the quality of the entropy used when those keys are created. If that randomness is compromised, even an offline wallet can be vulnerable.
The reported loss arrives amid continued scrutiny of wallet security across the crypto market. While the total value involved is large, the broader significance of the incident may be the reminder that operational flaws, rather than protocol-level failures, often remain a major source of loss in digital assets.
At this stage, the available information is limited to CoinDesk’s report and the basic scale of the theft. It is not clear from the metadata whether the flaw affected a single product line or a wider set of devices, or how many holders may have been exposed. Users of hardware wallets typically rely on strong randomness to generate secure seeds, making any defect in that process a serious concern.
Source: CoinDesk.
