Security Incidents

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the company will not proactively freeze wallet addresses unless it receives a court order or a request from law enforcement. Even amid hacker money-laundering disputes and community backlash, Circle still insists on operating in accordance with the rule of law. Jeremy Allaire sets Circle’s law-enforcement bottom line ----------------------------- As the global cryptocurrency market roils, Circle’s CEO Jeremy Allaire, the stablecoin issuer, delivered a clear stance on the most sensitive issue in the market at a press conference in Seoul, South Korea. He pointed out that although Circle has the technical means to freeze specific wallet addresses, unless it receives a court order or a formal instruction from law-enforcement authorities, the company will not take such action on its own.

On April 15, Arkham reported that the attacker who exploited a Bridged Polkadot vulnerability transferred around $269,000 in stolen funds to Tornado Cash, complicating asset tracking.

Bitcoin developers have proposed BIP 361 to safeguard the network against quantum computer risks by freezing vulnerable addresses. The proposal includes a phased plan to transition users to quantum-safe wallets, but it has sparked debate on user control and security.

Elastic Security Labs revealed that threat actors impersonated venture capital firms on LinkedIn and Telegram to deploy a Windows RAT named PHANTOMPULSE, using Obsidian note vaults for attacks, which Elastic Defend successfully blocked.

Zerion confirmed a recent AI-driven social engineering attack by North Korean hackers, resulting in a $100,000 loss from corporate hot wallets. User funds remain safe, and the company has taken precautionary measures. This follows another significant attack on Drift Protocol.

CoW Swap suspended its protocol after DNS hijacking redirected users to a fraudulent site, resulting in over $1 million in crypto theft. The incident led to precautionary actions and user warnings, while security measures were implemented.

Gaming infrastructure developer Lattice announced it will shut down on May 15 and reminded users to withdraw their funds. After the shutdown, contract funds cannot be withdrawn through L1 contracts; only funds in personal wallets can be recovered. Over the past five years, Lattice has failed to realize its business model and ultimately decided to close, but its MUD framework and DUST game will continue to run.

A user lost $316,000 in USDC due to a malicious Permit2 transaction, highlighting vulnerabilities in token approval mechanisms. GoPlus Security urges users to avoid phishing by following key security practices and installing its protective extension.

Cow Swap, a DEX aggregation platform built by Cow Protocol, suffered DNS hijacking on April 14. The attacker tampered with domain name records, redirecting user traffic to a spoofed website, and deployed a wallet-draining script. Cow DAO immediately paused the service and advised users to revoke approvals. This incident did not affect the protocol’s smart contracts, but users should remain alert to related risks and verify their transaction records.

Blockaid has identified a frontend attack on CoW Swap, marking its domain as malicious. Users are advised to cease interactions, revoke wallet authorizations, and await further updates from the CoW Swap team.

The Ethereum DeFi platform CoW Swap experienced DNS hijacking on April 14, which may put users at risk of phishing. Although the protocol itself was not compromised, the risk of frontend attacks remains high. The industry recommends that users revoke approvals before taking any future actions. CoW Swap offers batch transaction functionality and protects against MEV attacks, and its security incident may affect the entire DeFi ecosystem.

Blockaid's security system detected a frontend attack on Cowswap, flagging the website COW.FI as malicious. Users are urged to revoke wallet permissions and refrain from interacting with the DApp.

Polymarket announced an audit of some of the onboarded startup projects that have been accused of using allegedly insider trading account information to steer users into making trades. The move is intended to strengthen compliance management and address external concerns about the risks of insider trading.

Hacken’s report shows that in the first quarter of 2026, Web3 projects lost $464.5 million due to hacker attacks and scams, with phishing and social engineering attacks accounting for $306 million in losses. In addition, hardware wallet scams accounted for the bulk of the losses. Moreover, losses were also significant due to smart contract vulnerabilities and access control failures. In terms of regulation, the European legal framework has increased security monitoring requirements.

Recently, altcoins represented by RAVE have sparked a fierce investment craze, but some old star projects like FF and INX have used this wave of hype to carry out “pump-and-dump” operations—rapidly driving up coin prices to lure retail investors to buy, and then dumping them heavily, causing the price to plunge rapidly. Such behavior not only exposes the project team’s funding difficulties, but also damages investors’ trust. Investors need to stay alert to signals like abnormal short-term surges in order to avoid the risk of being manipulated by the market.

The U.S. FBI and Indonesian police successfully cooperated to dismantle a W3LL phishing network, seizing related equipment and detaining suspects. The W3LL phishing toolkit offers low-priced fake login pages that use man-in-the-middle attacks to easily bypass multi-factor authentication, forming an organized cybercrime ecosystem. This operation marks cooperation between the U.S. and Indonesia in law enforcement against cybercrime; however, the security threats to cryptocurrency users remain severe.

Solana ecosystem multi-signature agreement Squads issued a warning, pointing out that attackers launched an address poisoning attack against users by using fake accounts to trick users into making unauthorized transfers. Squads confirmed that there was no loss of funds and emphasized that this is a social engineering attack rather than a protocol vulnerability. To respond, Squads has implemented protective measures such as a warning system, non-interactive account prompts, and a whitelist mechanism. This incident reflects the growing social engineering threats in the Solana ecosystem and has prompted ongoing security reviews.

South Korea has recently seen multiple “revenge intermediary” organizations that use cryptocurrency as a payment method. They offer intimidation and murder services via Telegram. Even though the main culprit has been arrested, related advertisements are still being posted. Police are investigating more than 50 cases and have arrested about 30 people.

A fake Ledger app on Apple's App Store deceived musician Garrett Dutton into losing 5.9 BTC by entering his seed phrase. This case highlights ongoing wallet scams and the exploitation of trust, as the stolen bitcoin was laundered through KuCoin.