“I had the feeling that someone is pulling the carpet from under my feet.”
Researchers found a real vulnerability in the Fiat-Shamir transformation, a fundamental building block of modern cryptography used across blockchains and digital security systems. A malicious program can compute its own hash and manipulate verification steps to prove false statements. This threatens every cryptocurrency blockchain that relies on external proof verification. Polyhedra patched their system quickly, but the broader problem is far from solved. The foundation a lot of crypto security rests on just got a crack in it.