Researcher who found Zcash's bug adds Monero to his audit queue

Security engineer Taylor Hornby, who recently used Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 AI model to uncover a critical bug in Zcash, says he will next audit Monero and other privacy-focused cryptocurrencies.

The Zcash flaw, hidden in the Orchard privacy pool since May 2022, could have allowed unlimited counterfeit ZEC to be minted undetected and prompted an emergency fix by June 1 after its discovery on May 29.

Hornby, hired by nonprofit developer Shielded Labs to find protocol bugs before attackers do, disclosed the vulnerability instead of exploiting it and plans to seek a Zcash coinholder grant to fund further work.