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Researcher Who Found Zcash’s Bug With AI Adds Monero to His Audit Queue
Taylor Hornby, the security engineer who used Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 AI model to find a critical bug in Zcash, says privacy coin Monero is among the tokens he intends to audit next.
Asked on X whether he could look for flaws in Monero and other private cryptocurrencies, Hornby replied: “Absolutely! I’ll add Monero to my queue of things to audit.”
Monero, which trades under the ticker XMR, is one of the largest privacy-focused cryptocurrencies and hides transaction details by default, unlike Zcash, where users can choose either transparent or shielded addresses.
Hornby found the Zcash flaw on May 29. The bug, in the blockchain’s Orchard privacy pool, had gone undetected since May 2022 and could have allowed an attacker to mint unlimited, undetectable counterfeit ZEC. Shielded Labs, a nonprofit developer on the network, disclosed it on Thursday and pushed through an emergency fix by June 1.
Zcash fell 38% over the following 24 hours amid the fallout and concerns that a hacker may have stolen money from the shielded pool over the past few years without leaving any detectable trace.
Hornby, hired by Shielded Labs in April to find protocol bugs before attackers could, said he reported the flaw rather than exploited it because the Zcash developers were “like family” and he could “not live with that kind of betrayal.”
He plans to apply for a Zcash coinholder grant to fund further work.
See also: "Bitcoin Rebounds Above $61,000 After $1.6 Billion Sell-Off"
