Engineer Who Found Critical Zcash Flaw Adds Monero to Audit List

Security engineer Taylor Hornby, who discovered a critical vulnerability in cryptocurrency Zcash, has added Monero to his audit list.

CoinDesk reported on June 6 that Hornby replied on X, formerly Twitter, to a question about whether he planned to examine vulnerabilities in Monero and other privacy coins. "Of course," he wrote. "I'll add Monero to the audit list."

Monero is a leading privacy-focused cryptocurrency that anonymizes transaction records by default. Zcash, by contrast, allows users to choose between transparent and shielded addresses.

Hornby said on May 29 that he had discovered a flaw in Zcash's Orchard privacy pool using an artificial intelligence model from Anthropic. The vulnerability had existed since May 2022 and, if exploited, could have allowed unlimited unauthorized minting of Zcash tokens.

Zcash's developer deployed an emergency patch on June 1 to fix the issue. Even so, the market raised concerns that funds in the shielded pool may have been stolen over the past several years, sending Zcash's price sharply lower.