Monero developers have discovered a bug in the coin’s privacy algorithms that allows for transaction destinations to be identified, breaking privacy.
Monero Encounters Privacy Bug
The team behind Monero, one of crypto’s leading privacy coins, has discovered a “rather significant bug” in one of the coin’s privacy algorithms. The bug, which only affects funds spent within two blocks (about 20 minutes) of receiving them, allows for the destination of the funds sent to become discoverable.
A rather significant bug has been spotted in Monero’s decoy selection algorithm that may impact your transaction’s privacy. Please read this whole thread carefully. Thanks @justinberman95 for investigating this bug.
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— Monero || #xmr (@monero) July 27, 2021
In a tweet storm covering the issue, Monero assured users that the bug does not reveal addresses or transaction amounts and that funds transferred are never at risk of being stolen. Additionally, as the bug only affects funds sent within two blocks of receiving them, the team added that waiting at least an hour would mitigate the risk of compromising users’ privacy.
Monero has built a reputation as the most secure and anonymous way to send and store digital assets. However, it has also become the cryptocurrency of choice on dark web marketplaces as transactions on the network are completely anonymous and untraceable. In September 2020, the Inland Revenue Service started offering a $625,000 bounty to anyone who can break Monero’s anonymity. However, at the time of writing, the bounty remains unclaimed.
Disclaimer: At the time of writing this feature, the author owned BTC and ETH.
