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Hacks and Exploits News
Latest Hacks and Exploits coverage, summarized to 60 words each.
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All crypto news
Australia is cracking down on crypto businesses as its strict new regulatory deadline nears
Australia enforces a new regulatory deadline for crypto businesses, threatening civil or criminal penalties for non‑compliance after October 1. Firms must register with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and meet anti‑money‑laundering standards or risk breaching financial services law. The crackdown signals a tougher stance, tightening market oversight and potentially reducing illicit activity in the sector.
OpenAI Releases GPT-6 Astra: The Closest AI Model Yet to AGI
OpenAI launches GPT‑6 Astra, a model that autonomously discovers and exploits previously unknown security vulnerabilities in hardened systems, prompting a staged rollout and a White House security review before any public release. The unprecedented capability raises concerns about AI‑driven cyber threats, urging regulators and industry leaders to tighten oversight and develop defensive AI tools to protect critical infrastructure.
Crypto market cap surges to $2.82 trillion as Zcash leads rally alongside stocks
Crypto market capitalization climbs to $2.82 trillion as Zcash spearheads the rally, while Bitcoin breaches $80,000 and related equities such as Strategy surge. Investors remain divided on Federal Reserve rate outlook, sustaining momentum across digital assets and stocks. The synchronized rise suggests broader risk‑on sentiment, potentially driving further price appreciation across the crypto sector.
Coldcard hacker swaps stolen Bitcoin for ETH via THORChain
Coldcard hacker redirects roughly 10% of stolen Bitcoin, about 1,200 BTC, into Ethereum via THORChain, creating a fresh ETH address that researchers have identified. The exploit marks a third‑wave operation, leveraging cross‑chain swaps to obscure provenance. This activity signals heightened demand for decentralized bridges, prompting regulators and exchanges to tighten monitoring of multi‑chain laundering pathways.
Ukraine Busts Kyiv Crypto Drainer Ring Moving Up to $1M Monthly
Ukraine’s police expose a fraud ring that siphons up to $1 million monthly from victims by posting fake investment ads on Telegram, directing EU users to a counterfeit exchange that instantly drains wallets; the scheme exploits crypto’s anonymity and cross‑border speed, prompting regulators to tighten oversight and investors to demand stronger verification, which could dampen illicit trading volumes.
Anthropic Admits Security Failures Behind Claude Hacking Incidents
After Claude models accessed real systems during cyber tests, Anthropic tightened its safeguards and warned that flawed training can encourage dangerous behavior.
OpenAI's Astra Becomes Its First AI Model With 'Critical' Hacking Abilities
The unreleased model can find zero-day vulnerabilities and chain them into working exploits without a human walking it through each step, and access to that capability is starting with a small group of testers.
CrowdStrike and federal authorities dismantle Russian malware that secretly stole crypto for 8 years
Russia-based Sality watched for copied bitcoin and Ethereum addresses and quietly replaced them with the attacker’s. CrowdStrike and law enforcement have now isolated more than 15,000 infected machines.
Sui DeFi protocol Full Sail to wind down after Switchboard incident
Full Sail is shutting down after an attacker removed about $91,000 from three vaults during a security incident linked to oracle provider Switchboard.
OpenAI says its new 'Astra' AI can build attacks without human help
Astra is the first OpenAI model to reach its “Critical” cybersecurity threshold, meaning it can find previously unknown vulnerabilities and develop ways to exploit them across hardened systems.
Musk’s X hit by wave of unsolicited password reset emails
Multiple crypto industry figures and CoinDesk staff received unexpected password reset emails on Tuesday, though there is no evidence yet that X itself has been breached.
Dropbox Security Breach: Hackers Access Accounts Through Authentication Flaw
Attackers reportedly registered Lenovo IDs using victims’ email addresses, allowing them to sign into existing Dropbox accounts without their passwords.
X Data Breach? Users Are Getting Flooded With Password Reset Emails Nobody Requested
X engineers have acknowledged the issue, but have not confirmed a new data breach of its systems.
Firelight raises $8 million, expands beyond XRP as it aims to make DeFi less scary for fintechs
The protocol aims to give fintechs and investors a faster way to recover losses from DeFi hacks, while letting XRP, bitcoin and XLM holders earn yield by backing that protection.
North Korean hackers are moving tens of millions on Hyperliquid as Trump pushes to onshore the crypto platform
Blockchain data reviewed by CoinDesk shows wallets tied to North Korea’s Lazarus Group sold more than $30 million in bitcoin on the platform in the last three weeks alone.
More Markets lending reserve drained for $9.3M: Blockaid
Blockaid said an attacker used an Ankr liquid staking token and E-mode to overborrow from More Markets and drain about $9.3 million in WFLOW from a lending reserve.
Crypto.com's Cronos Halts Entire Blockchain After $75M Tectonic Exploit
Some $6 million reached Ethereum before validators froze the chain, stranding the rest on a network that still is not producing blocks.
Cronos halts network after Tectonic exploit involving estimated $75M
Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek said the company’s app and exchange were unaffected by the Tectonic breach and continued operating normally.
Polygon Quietly Patched Security Flaws in Two Hard Forks Before Disclosing Them
The Austin and Kyoto hard forks, deployed quietly on the Bor and Heimdall clients before public disclosure, closed denial-of-service and consensus-hardening flaws that Polygon says were never exploited.
From Hawala to Swift: Inside the 1,000-year battle to move money safely
Finance has spent centuries decoupling wealth from physical transport, but constantly erasing friction creates vectors for increasingly high-tech exploits.
Crypto.com-linked Cronos network halts after Tectonic exploit estimated at $75 million
Li says the attacker manipulated the price of Tectonic's illiquid TONIC token before borrowing against the inflated collateral, a Mango Markets-style hack.
After Their AI Models Hacked Real Companies, AI Labs Call for Stronger Cyber Defenses
More than 100 AI, security, finance, and technology organizations want governments and industry to prepare for attacks powered by increasingly capable models.
A $1.1 million crypto card hack crashed a neobank's token 49%
The exploit caused the neobank's AVICI token to drop 49% from a 24-hour high, hitting a record low before paring some of the losses.
Layer 1 blockchain Fogo halts mainnet after attacker receives 400 million FOGO tokens, 10% of circulating supply
The affected tokens make up about 4% of FOGO's genesis supply and were worth about $3 million at the time of the incident.
Cosmos Labs says it wrongly cleared the bug behind a $5.7 million six-chain hack
MANTRA Chain, which lost $3.6 million, claimed the patch was only released 20 hours before the attack began and did not identify the flaw it fixed.
Moonwell investigates lending market issue on Base as security firms flag multimillion-dollar exploit
Security firms CertiK and PeckShield estimate losses of around $8.7 million after an attacker manipulated the collateral price of MAMO.
Chainalysis-run sting targets child exploitation networks with aid of Binance, Coinbase
'Operation Lighthouse' went after child sex abuse materials, working with law enforcement to round up more than 14,000 investigative leads.
Hugging Face hack exposes the open-weight AI cybersecurity paradox
Hugging Face relies on open weight Chinese models to defend itself from rogue AI agents. But a lack of safety guardrails makes those models potentially dangerous too.
Galaxy puts Coldcard hack losses at 1,789 BTC, with 87% unmoved
Galaxy Research’s latest tally shows that more than half of 221 Coldcard hack victim reports involved individual losses exceeding 1 Bitcoin.
Hugging Face Explores $13 Billion Sale a Month After a Rogue OpenAI Agent Hacked It
The open-source AI hub is fielding buyout interest at nearly triple its 2023 valuation, weeks after a security breach and days after Stripe's OpenRouter deal reset the price of AI infrastructure.
Ethereum lending app Term Finance loses $8.5 million after attacker buys voting power
The exploit shows how lightly held voting tokens can become a means of attack when control of a protocol is cheaper than the assets it governs.
Term Finance loses estimated $8.5M in vault governance exploit
Term permanently closed its Meta Vaults after an attack reportedly removed nearly all of their Ethereum deposits.
DeFi lending protocol Term Finance loses an estimated $8.5 million to governance exploit
Term vault proposals face a seven-day delay and can be vetoed by liquidity providers, yet those controls apparently did not stop the exploit.
Microsoft Fixes 'Perfect 10' Exploit That Could Have Let Hackers Run Code Remotely
The Entra ID flaw earned the highest possible severity score, but Microsoft says it patched the bug before publishing the CVE and found no evidence it was ever exploited.
AI Has Made Bitcoin Software a Target—This Group Is Fighting Back
A group of 20-odd developers is scanning the Bitcoin ecosystem for AI-discoverable flaws, warning that cheap, powerful models have handed attackers unprecedented reach.
Web3 gaming network Sandbox stops Base and BNB chain bridging after exploit
The Sandbox disabled bridging on affected networks to isolate tokens and warned users not to trade SAND on Base and BNB, citing an impact of under 0.01% of supply.
Coldcard Adds New Security Measures After $130 Million Bitcoin Exploit
Coinkite's latest firmware requires users to add their own randomness when generating wallet seeds and fixes additional security issues uncovered during a three-week review.
BounceBit to sunset blockchain, migrate to BNB Chain after $3 million exploit
The attacker transferred approximately 286.5 million BB from nine wallets before block production was eventually halted.
AI adoption in crypto crime rose 40% over the past year, TRM Labs says
Crypto hackers are quickly picking up on AI developments to discover overlooked vulnerabilities and infiltrate IT firms, the report said.
MANTRA token plunges 18% to record low as blockchain halts after exploit
The token touched $0.004126 minutes before the network stopped producing blocks, while MANTRA later said an attacker exploited a vulnerability in software used by the chain.