Proof of humanity protocol Worldcoin launched its audit stories on July 28 as criticism of its knowledge assortment practices continues to mount. The brand new stories have been conducted by safety consulting companies Nethermind and Least Authority.
In line with an accompanying announcement from Worldcoin, Nethermind discovered 26 safety points with the protocol, of which 24 have been “recognized as fastened” through the verification section whereas one was mitigated and one other was acknowledged.
Least Authority found three points and made six options, all of which “have been resolved or have deliberate resolutions,” the announcement acknowledged.
Study extra concerning the outcomes of two separate safety audits of the Worldcoin protocol, carried out by @NethermindEth & @LeastAuthority.https://t.co/fXa50wNBYE
— Worldcoin (@worldcoin) July 28, 2023
Worldcoin first rose to prominence in 2021 when it introduced that it might give away free tokens to any customers who confirm their humanness, which they may do by having their iris scanned by a tool referred to as an “Orb.” The challenge was co-founded by Sam Altman, the co-founder of AI developer OpenAI.
On the time, Altman and different staff members argued that AI bots would turn into an growing downside on the web if individuals didn’t discover a solution to confirm their humanness with out giving up their privateness. In line with the protocol’s documentation, The Orb produces a hash of the person’s iris scan however doesn’t make a copy of the iris scan.
Associated: Worldcoin confirms it’s the reason for mysterious Protected deployments
Worldcoin initiated its public launch on July 25, after almost two years of growth and beta testing. However criticism of it erupted nearly instantly. The UK’s Info Commissioner’s Workplace (ICO) reportedly mentioned the federal government physique was deciding whether or not to research the challenge for violating the nation’s knowledge safety legal guidelines. French knowledge safety company CNIL additionally questioned Worldcoin’s legality.
The crypto neighborhood was divided over the challenge’s launch, with some individuals seeing it as the beginning of a dystopian future the place privateness can be eradicated. In distinction, others noticed it as a crucial step in direction of defending people in opposition to malicious AIs.
The brand new audit stories cowl all kinds of safety subjects, together with resistance to DDoS assaults, case-specific implementation errors, key storage and correct administration of encryption and signing of keys, knowledge leaking and data integrity, and others. Some points discovered have been the results of dependencies on Semaphore and Ethereum, together with “elliptic curve precompile help or Poseidon hash perform configuration,” the announcement acknowledged.
All points besides one have been fastened, mitigated, or have deliberate fixes. The one safety difficulty that was not fastened by the point of verification has a severity of “undetermined” and is listed as “acknowledged.”
