This College Freshman Is Out to 51% Attack Your Cryptocurrency

A college freshman is coming after your cryptocurrency – but not to steal your coins, just to prove that someone could do so pretty easily.

According to a crypto enthusiast and security researcher going by the handle “geocold51,” most small-scale cryptocurrencies are at risk from the industry’s most feared vulnerability – the 51% attack. During this attack, a miner takes over more than half of a cryptocurrency’s mining power, which then allows them to erase a past transaction and replace it with another transaction – called a double spend.

While the ecosystem that’s been built up around bitcoin and other top-tier cryptos make them resistant to these kinds of attacks, other cryptocurrencies with less of a community of miners aren’t as secure.

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