The blunder was likely due to the authorities' lack of knowledge about cryptocurrency. The move was somewhat akin to authorities publicly posting a username and password for a criminal's bank account — though that would likely be an easier mistake to unwind.
Crypto stolen from Korean authorities after they post wallet seed phrase
When Korean authorities posted a photograph of seized cash and other items from a police raid, they included photos of cards containing crypto wallet seed phrases, which were proudly arranged on the table next to Ledger hardware wallets for the photo op. Because it only takes a seed phrase to gain control of a crypto wallet, someone who saw the press release quickly acted to move around 4 million PRTG tokens from the wallet. The tokens are notionally worth $4.9 million, although the token is not highly liquid.
- "$4.8M in crypto stolen after Korean tax agency exposes wallet seed", Bleeping Computer [archive]
YieldBlox lending pool drained of $10.2 million
A lending pool operated by YieldBlox on the Stellar blockchain was emptied of around $10.2 million in an oracle manipulation attack on the Reflector oracle supplying prices for the USTRY/USDC market. Reflector has said that there was no flaw with their oracle, and that market illiquidity caused the problem. "Reflector quoted correct prices. ... but it's impossible to quote adequate prices for a market fully handled by a single market-maker with almost zero trading activity."
The attacker was able to manipulate the oracle price to show that USTRY was priced at $100 (rather than its actual trading price of around $1.05). Then, they borrowed against the overvalued asset, withdrawing XLM and USDC priced at $10.2 million. However, around 48 million of the stolen XLM (~$7.2 million) were frozen.
IoTeX bridge exploited for $2 million after private key compromise
IoTeX, a platform to connect IoT devices to blockchain networks, lost around $2 million after a private key compromise enabled an attacker to drain funds from the project's token safe. Initial loss estimates were as high as $8.8 million, although IoTeX CEO Raullen Chai stated that the actual loss was closer to $2 million.
Blockchain security researcher Specter has suggested there may be links between this attack and a $50 million theft from the Infini "stablecoin neobank" a year ago.
South Korean prosecutors lose $22 million of seized crypto to the wallet inspector, later recover it
Staff members working for South Korean prosecutors, for some reason, decided to use a "wallet checking tool" during an August 2025 audit of seized crypto assets. The tool they selected turned out to be a phishing tool, and five wallets were drained of 320 BTC.
On February 19, the office announced they had recovered the stolen assets and identified the thief.
CrossCurve users exploited for around $3 million
Hackers exploited a bug in smart contracts deployed by the defi protocol CrossCurve to steal an estimated $3 million across multiple blockchains. The thief was able to spoof cross-chain messages, causing the CrossCurve bridge to release assets not belonging to them.
CrossCurve took a conciliatory tone in on-chain messages sent to the thief, writing, "These tokens were wrongfully taken from users due to a smart contract exploit. We do not believe this was intentional on your part, and there is no indication of malicious intent." (Who among us hasn't accidentally stolen millions of dollars?) However, they warned, they planned to escalate to working with law enforcement and blockchain security firms to investigate and prosecute the theft if the funds were not returned within 72 hours.
$29 million stolen from from Step Finance treasury wallets
The Solana-based defi portfolio tracker Step Finance lost 261,854 SOL (~$28.7 million) when a thief gained access to treasury and fee wallets. It's not yet clear how the attacker was able to steal the funds, although Step Finance posted to Twitter that the theft occurred via a "well known attack vector". Step wrote that they were working with cybersecurity firms and law enforcement to address the incident.
Aperture Finance users lose at least $3.4 million
An attacker exploited a bug in an Aperture Finance smart contract to steal at least $3.4 million from users who had enabled "instant liquidity management" features. Aperture Finance is a defi platform that aims to allow users to trade by telling large language models their "intents".
Aperture has said they disabled portions of their web app impacted by the bug, and are working to try to trace and recover stolen funds.
$13.43 million stolen from Matcha Meta users in SwapNet exploit
Some users of Matcha Meta, a decentralized exchange aggregator on the Base blockchain, suffered losses after a thief exploited a vulnerability in its SwapNet integration. SwapNet is another DEX aggregator that integrates with Matcha Meta, and Matcha blamed a vulnerability in their smart contracts that enabled a thief to steal assets transferred via the integration.
Most of the lost funds came from a single user, who lost $13.34 million in assets. Other users lost a combined $90,000.
- "SwapNet Incident Post Mortem", Matcha Meta
Saga halts blockchain after $7 million theft
The Saga project halted its blockchain after acknowledging that $7 million had been stolen. An attacker was evidently able to mint a large quantity of Saga Dollar tokens, though it's not yet clear whether it was because of a smart contract vulnerability, private key compromise, or some other issue. The attacker was quick to swap most of the assets to ETH to thwart asset freezes or blockchain halts.
The Saga Dollar token lost its peg and fell to around $0.75 after the attack.
Crypto holder loses $283 million to scammer impersonating wallet support
A crypto holder has lost $282 million in bitcoin and litecoin after a scammer impersonating a customer support employee for the Trezor hardware wallet manufacturer successfully convinced them into revealing their seed phrase. After gaining access to the assets, they quickly swapped them to the Monero privacycoin. The volume of assets was so large that the Monero price spiked as the scammer laundered the finds. The scammer also swapped assets using the THORChain project, which boasted on social media about the "World record speedrun. ⚡️" (presumably without realizing they were bragging about a thief using their project to launder money).
Around $700,000 of the stolen assets were frozen thanks to intervention by a security firm called ZeroShadow, although this represents only 0.2% of the total loss.