Shielded Labs is bringing on Taylor Hornby (@earthrise) as a part-time Security Consultant for a three-month engagement, starting today, as we’re seeing a significant increase in security-related activity. Over the past few weeks, the volume and pace of vulnerability reports has picked up, and we expect this trend to continue.
In March, a white-hat researcher used AI to uncover a critical vulnerability in zcashd that had gone undetected for nearly six years. It was patched quickly, but it wasn’t an isolated incident. That same researcher, as well as three other independent researchers, have identified additional vulnerabilities in zcashd and Zebra that have been triaged, and there are a growing number of reports from other researchers as well. Meanwhile, the crypto ecosystem is seeing a surge in AI-assisted attacks. Earlier this month, the Drift Protocol was drained of $285 million in a hack tied to North Korean-affiliated actors who used AI-assisted social engineering to gain access.
We think this is the beginning of a broader trend. AI is making it dramatically easier and faster to find bugs in complex codebases, and we expect the volume and sophistication of vulnerability reports, and possibly exploits, to increase significantly. We want to get ahead of it.
Taylor’s primary focus will be identifying vulnerabilities and helping improve the overall process for handling them. If there are critical bugs in the codebase, we want to make sure they are found and fixed. When vulnerabilities are found, Taylor will work closely with the other Zcash organizations to assess severity, coordinate fixes, and make sure patches are rolled out to infrastructure providers. His work will run alongside other efforts across the Zcash ecosystem, with the goal of reaching a point where none of these teams are finding anything. That would give us confidence that a bad actor using off-the-shelf AI tools is not going to find something we’ve missed.
Taylor has been involved with Zcash since before launch and has spent years working on its security. He previously worked as a security engineer at the Electric Coin Company, and after leaving ECC, spent a year as the Ecosystem Security Lead through Zcash Community Grants. He currently serves on the Zcash Foundation Board of Directors. Shielded Labs has also previously engaged Taylor to conduct a design review of ZIP 231 on Memo Bundles.
We’re grateful to have someone with Taylor’s background stepping into this role. He brings exactly the kind of depth of knowledge and experience with Zcash that this work requires.
