Ethereum researcher Justin Drake has urged the cryptocurrency industry to prepare for what he called 'bunker mode' in response to the growing threat that artificial intelligence could compromise the cryptographic security of digital wallets. In a post on X on Wednesday, Drake warned that recent advances in AI, including mathematical breakthroughs from OpenAI, suggest that AI-powered attacks on the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) could become feasible within months.
ECDSA is the cryptographic standard used to secure private keys on many blockchain networks, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. If an attacker could break ECDSA, they could derive private keys from public addresses and drain wallets, potentially leading to catastrophic losses across the industry.
Drake's advice to cryptocurrency users was to gradually move their funds to fresh addresses as a precaution. The warning comes at a time when the crypto industry has been focused on the longer-term threat from quantum computing, which is also expected to break current public-key cryptography, though that timeline has generally been measured in years or decades. Drake's remarks suggest that AI could pose a more immediate risk.
The specific technical capabilities of OpenAI's recent mathematical work were not detailed in the post, but Drake's assessment has sparked debate in crypto circles about whether existing security measures are sufficient to withstand AI-driven attacks.