Security engineer Taylor Hornby — who used Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 AI model to uncover a major Zcash vulnerability — says he’s adding Monero to his audit queue.
When asked on X whether he could look for flaws in Monero and other privacy coins, Hornby replied, “Absolutely! I’ll add Monero to my queue of things to audit.” Monero (XMR) is one of the largest privacy-focused cryptocurrencies and, unlike Zcash, hides transaction details by default; Zcash users can choose between transparent and shielded addresses.
Hornby discovered the Zcash bug on May 29. The flaw was in Zcash’s Orchard privacy pool and had gone unnoticed since May 2022. According to Shielded Labs — a nonprofit developer on the Zcash network — the bug could have allowed an attacker to mint unlimited, undetectable counterfeit ZEC. The vulnerability was disclosed on Thursday and an emergency fix was deployed by June 1. The news sent Zcash’s price tumbling 38% over the following 24 hours amid fears that a malicious actor might have siphoned funds from the shielded pool in recent years without leaving a trace.
Hornby, who was hired by Shielded Labs in April to proactively hunt for protocol bugs, said he reported the issue rather than exploiting it because the Zcash developers “were like family” and he “could not live with that kind of betrayal.” He also intends to apply for a Zcash coinholder grant to fund further auditing work.
With AI-assisted auditing gaining attention after this discovery, Hornby’s move to audit Monero will be watched closely by privacy-coin communities and security teams alike.
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