On January 6, the project's creators drained the tokens that had been put into the project, then deleted their website and social media accounts. Altogether, they withdrew 558.3 ETH (~$1.25 million).
xKingdom rug pulls for $1.25 million
The xKingdom project promised users a way to "build your kingdom" on Twitter, earning tokens by interacting with tweets and doing "quests". Users had to borrow XKING tokens in order to participate.
CoinsPaid hacked again
The crypto payments platform CoinsPaid was hacked for the second time in six months. This time, around $7.5 million in various tokens was stolen.
In July 2023, an attacker stole $37.3 million from the CoinsPaid platform. CoinsPaid said at the time that they suspected the attacker was the North Korean Lazarus hacking group, which has been a prolific perpetrator of cryptocurrency thefts.
Blockchain security firm CertiK suffers compromise of their own
The Twitter account of the blockchain security company CertiK was hacked, then used to post tweets ostensibly warning of a massive crypto vulnerability and urging users to click a link to protect their wallets, but which instead linked the account's some 340,000+ followers to a site that would drain their wallets if connected.
CertiK quickly regained control of the account and deleted the tweets, later explaining that an employee had been contacted by a "verified account, associated with well-known media". The journalist's account, apparently compromised, successfully phished the CertiK employee by sending what looked like a Calendly meeting scheduling link, but what was in fact a malicious link used to take over the CertiK Twitter account.
Blockchain sleuth zachxbt criticized CertiK, which describes itself as a leading blockchain security firm, for not protecting against the attack, and asked if they would be reimbursing phishing victims.
Gamma Strategies exploited for $6.2 million
The Gamma Strategies defi protocol suffered an exploit when an attacker targeted their vaults on several projects across the Arbitrum layer-2 network. The attacker successfully stole almost $6.2 million from these vaults by manipulating the price of some of the assets involved.
Gamma has contacted the hacker to try to negotiate a return of some of the assets, and also says they have engaged law enforcement. Although they have promised to try to repay some of the stolen assets, they are estimating between 25% and 40% recoveries for various categories of users.
- "Post-Mortem & Remediation Plan", Gamma Strategies [archive]
- "DeFi protocol Gamma Strategies suffers an estimated $3.4 million exploit", The Block [archive]
Radiant Capital lending protocol hacked for $4.5 million
Radiant Capital, a cross-chain lending protocol built on the Arbitrum layer-2 network, was hacked for 1,900 ETH (~$4.5 million). The exploit relied on a flaw in the underlying code, which was forked from Compound and Aave. The original code has a known rounding issue, which makes new projects vulnerable to attack shortly after they are deployed if they are not specifically configured to avoid the issue. In this case, the attacker had observed the contract being deployed and performed the exploit only six seconds after the project was activated.
Radiant Capital sent an on-chain message to the attacker, offering to negotiate a bounty.
- Tweet thread by Radiant Capital [archive]
- Tweet thread by PeckShield [archive]
- On-chain message from Radiant Capital to the exploiter [archive]
Wallet security startup founder scammed out of $125,000
Bill Lou, the co-founder of a cryptocurrency wallet that claims to "revolutionize wallet security", was scammed out of 52 stETH (~$125,000) when he clicked a link promising an airdrop for a project. However, he had fallen for a phishing link that was prominently placed in Google search results, mimicking a real project but draining users' wallets when they authorized the transaction.
"I just got scammed out of $125k of stEth while trying to claim the $LFG airdrop. And I'm a fking founder of a wallet startup that's trying to improve wallet security..." wrote Lou on Twitter. "This is the first time I've been scammed. I always read about others but you never think it could happen to you..." he wrote.
If the founder of a wallet security project can't avoid scams in the crypto world, what hope do the rest of us have?
Orbit Bridge hacked for $81 million
The Orbit Bridge project, a cross-chain bridge for the Orbit Chain project, was exploited on December 31 for around $81 million. The attacker made off with around 26,742 ETH (~$64 million) and $18 million in the DAI stablecoin. Orbit Chain's total value locked plummeted from $152 million to $71 million as over half the funds were drained.
Orbit began sending the attacker on-chain messages, writing that "we will track you down and restore the damage you incurred to the ecosystem. And we will not stop." Orbit also wrote on Twitter that they were working with various law enforcement agencies.
Wallet gets phished for $4.4 million
Someone had a not so fun end to the year when they fell victim to a phishing attack and had around 275,700 LINK drained from their crypto wallet. Those tokens are priced at around $4.4 million.
The attack was perpetrated by the Pink Drainer group, which had recently compromised the Twitter account of Compound Finance to try to lure its more than 250,000 followers into authorizing the malicious drainer. It's not clear if that's how this wallet was drained, however, as Pink Drainer uses numerous strategies to attract victims.
UST and LUNA deemed securities in court
The federal judge overseeing the SEC v. Terraform Labs case has determined that Terra's UST stablecoin, LUNA token, and related tokens were securities. "There is no genuine dispute that UST, LUNA, wLUNA, and MIR are securities because they are investment contracts," wrote Judge Jed Rakoff.
This is a major decision in the crypto world, which recently celebrated a decision in the SEC v. Ripple case, which found that some sales of Ripple's XRP token did not constitute unregistered securities offerings.
The SEC has maintained a position that the majority of crypto asset offerings are securities offerings, which has been an unpopular opinion among those in the cryptocurrency industry — which broadly does not wish to be regulated by the SEC.
- Memorandum & Opinion in SEC v. Terraform Labs [archive]
Levana Protocol loses over $1.1 million in slow motion
An attacker successfully manipulated an oracle to drain around 10% of the liquidity pool for the Levana Protocol, an Osmosis-based perpetual futures project. This amounted to $1.146 million.
The attack was unusual in that it lasted almost two weeks, going unnoticed because it was draining pools slowly enough that the Levana team assumed it was organic activity. However, when the network became congested, the attack suddenly became more profitable — and more noticeable.
- "Levana exploit postmortem", Medium [archive]