The project had attracted customers by advertising yields of 76–95%.
Hypervault rug pulls for $3.6 million
Only days after the Hypervault yield farming platform announced on Twitter that they'd surpassed $5 million in total value locked, the platform suddenly shut down its website and social media accounts. Simultaneously, the crypto security firm PeckShield observed an "abnormal withdrawal" of a large quantity of various crypto assets priced at around $3.6 million, which were swapped to 752 ETH (~$3.1 million) and laundered through Tornado Cash.
Griffin AI exploited for $3 million one day after launch
One day after Griffin AI launched its GAIN token on Binance Alpha, an attacker minted 5 billion fake GAIN tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, then exploited a cross-chain endpoint to trick the bridge to the Binance chain into recognizing them as the real thing. The attacker was only able to sell a small fraction of their tokens, but they made off with approximately $3 million as the token plunged in price. According to CEO Oliver Feldmeier, the exploit was enabled by "a misconfigured layer Zero (cross-chain messaging) set-up and compromised key".
Griffin AI promises to allow customers to "build, deploy, and scale autonomous AI agents for crypto finance". These are essentially AI-powered bots that perform various functions — some of Griffin's advertised examples include a "robo-adviser" to provide "tailored investment strategies", and bots to do arbitrage trading or manage staked assets.
Seedify launchpad project suffers bridge exploit
An attacker exploited bridges for SFUND, the token issued by the Seedify launchpad and incubator. It appears the exploiter has profited around $1.7 million from the theft. Seedify issued a statement announcing the theft, and said the bridge contracts that were exploited had been deployed for three years. The SFUND token crashed in price by around 80% before recovering somewhat.
Seedify has been a launchpad for blockchain games, NFT projects, and other web3 products. The team recently has embraced "vibe coding" — a practice in which people rely heavily on AI to generate code.
UXLINK exploited for around $28 million, then hacker gets phished
The "AI-powered web3 social platform" UXLINK was exploited by an attacker that gained control of the project's multisignature wallet, then minted billions of the project's UXLINK token. Though the tokens were worth hundreds of millions of dollars on paper, low liquidity and a crashing token price means the attacker cashed out around $28 million.
Shortly after the hack, the attacker apparently approved a phishing contract, perhaps in their rush to swap tokens before the price crashed further or before exchanges could freeze the tokens. Around 542 million of the UXLINK tokens were sent to a phishing address as a result, though it doesn't appear the phishing wallet has been able to sell the tokens.
Yala stablecoin depegs after $7.6 million theft
The YU bitcoin-backed stablecoin lost its intended dollar peg after what they described as "an attempted attack", later writing that there was an "unauthorized transfer of funds". Although they initially wrote that "All funds are safe", they later stated that they "identified the stolen assets on-chain and are actively working with law enforcement to pursue recovery." Research firm Lookonchain observed a large mint of the YU token that may have been related — if so, the attacker successfully stole at least 1,501 ETH ($6.75 million), and holds a substantial quantity of YU they still haven't sold.
Despite the project's attempted reassurances, the YU stablecoin lost its $1 peg, plummeting as low as around $0.20. As of writing, about a day later, the stablecoin is still well below its peg, at around $0.94.
Shibarium bridge hit with $2.4 million flash loan attack
A bridge for Shibarium, the layer-2 network for the Shiba Inu project, was exploited for approximately $2.4 million in funds. The attacker bought 4.6 million BONE tokens (the governance token for Shibarium) using a flash loan, then used compromised validator signing keys to take control of the majority of validator power. Then, they used that control to drain around 225 ETH and 92.6 billion SHIB, together priced at around $2.4 million at the time of the theft.
The project has paused staking on the network, freezing the BONE tokens borrowed by the attacker, which may limit the attacker's profits.
Thorchain founder exploited for $1.35 million
John-Paul Thorbjornsen, the founder of Thorchain and Vultisig, suffered a wallet drain, reportedly after experiencing a video meeting scam from an attacker who had exploited the Telegram account belonging to one of his friends. According to JP, the scammer used a malicious video call link to place malware on his computer, which then exfiltrated private keys for one of his crypto wallets. Some questioned whether he had made up the story, as he immediately began using the story to promote his Vultisig product.
Later that week, Thorbjornsen apparently suffered another loss — this one confirmed on-chain to be around $1.35 million.
According to crypto sleuth zachxbt, the attackers appeared to be a part of North Korean crypto hacking operations. "JP is one of the people whose has greatly benefited financially from the laundering of DPRK hacks/exploits. So it’s a bit poetic he got rekt here by DPRK," he wrote.
$41.5 million stolen from SwissBorg in Kiln API exploit
Thieves stole 192,600 SOL (~$41.5 million) from a wallet belonging to the Swiss cryptocurrency exchange SwissBorg. The attack is being blamed on a vulnerability in the API of Kiln, a staking partner used for SwissBorg's "Earn" program.
SwissBorg announced that they would be reimbursing impacted customers using treasury funds, and working with security firms and law enforcement to try to recover the stolen assets.
Massive NPM supply chain attack puts crypto transactions at risk
After a JavaScript developer's NPM account was compromised in a phishing attack, attackers used it to upload malicious versions of heavily used JavaScript color and debugging libraries, as well as simple utilities that do things like
strip-ansi or determine if a variable is-arrayish. Altogether, the packages get around two billion downloads per week, and the compromise is being called the "largest supply chain attack in history".Once the malicious code is injected, it then intercepts network traffic and API calls, scanning for cryptocurrency transactions across numerous blockchains. When a network request is made to transfer crypto, the malicious code intercepts it and replaces the destination with wallets controlled by the attackers.
Various prominent people in crypto have warned about the attack, with Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet tweeting: "If you use a hardware wallet, pay attention to every transaction before signing and you're safe. If you don't use a hardware wallet, refrain from making any on-chain transactions for now."
Ultimately, the exploit was not very financially successful, with reports that less than $1,000 was stolen.
Nemo Protocol exploited for $2.4 million
The Nemo Protocol on the Sui blockchain suffered a $2.4 million exploit. The defi yield infrastructure protocol acknowledged the theft shortly after, explaining they had paused the protocol smart contracts as they investigated the theft. It appears the thief was able to manipulate a price oracle, siphoning $2.4 million in USDC from the project. They then bridged the funds from Arbitrum to Ethereum.