A worrying pattern has formed in the crypto sector. Reports say that about four in five projects hit by major hacks do not fully recover. Money is lost, yes. But the deeper damage is often to trust — and that can be fatal. Related Reading: Saylor Defends Bitcoin Treasury Firms Amid Rising Criticism Trust Erodes Fast When a breach is found, users pull funds quickly. Partners step back. Liquidity dries up. Industry experts, including Immunefi CEO Mitchell Amador, warn that slow or unclear responses can push entire communities away. Some projects try to fix code quietly. That can fail. Silence is sometimes treated as hiding. Panic spreads. Confidence drops. “Nearly 80% of projects that suffer a hack never fully recover,” Amador pointed out. The primary reason, he said, is not the initial loss of funds, but the “breakdown of operations and trust during the response.” How Teams Respond Can Decide Fate Reports note that incident plans are rare and that the absence of a clear playbook hurts more than the bug itself. A quick, honest update can calm people. A slow, confused reaction makes things worse. In many cases, even after the technical flaw is fixed, the project stays damaged because users left and did not return. Some teams are rebuilt under new names. Others never regain attention. The human side of recovery matters a lot. Amador said many protocols freeze once an exploit comes to light. According to him, teams often underestimate how exposed they are and lack the operational readiness needed to handle a serious security breach. Security Problems Are Changing The attacks are not all the same. Smart contract bugs remain a big cause. But now simple human errors, like leaked keys or social tricks, are also common. Reports say that losses in recent years have grown into the billions, with one figure around $3.4 billion lost in a single year. That number shows the scale of the risk. Community Reaction Shapes Outcomes A project can be technically repaired. But the people who used it may have moved on. Communities are fragile. Some founders try to refund users or set up funds to cover losses. That can help. Other teams decide to close down the service and focus on other work. The decision is sometimes made for them when liquidity vanishes and partners cut ties. Recovery is often not just a technical task; it is a rebuild of trust and reputation. Data from Chainalysis shows the $1.4 billion Bybit hack accounted for almost half of crypto losses in 2025. Related Reading: What’s Driving The $1.42 Billion Comeback In Spot Bitcoin ETFs? Huge Damage Crypto hacks jumped sharply in 2025 as attackers hit both large platforms and private wallets. Based on reports, total losses reached $3.4 billion, the biggest annual figure since 2022. Just three breaches were responsible for nearly 70% of that damage by early December, with the $1.4 billion Bybit exploit standing out as the largest. Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
The following article is adapted from The Block’s newsletter, The Daily, which comes out on weekday afternoons.
Ledger is dealing with a new data exposure incident involving its third-party payment processor, Global-e.
On-chain security researcher ZachXBT flagged hundreds of wallets across multiple EVM chains getting drained for small amounts, typically under $2,000 per victim, funneling into a single suspicious address. The theft total climbed past $107,000 and kept rising. The root cause is still unknown, but users reported receiving a phishing email disguised as a mandatory MetaMask […]
The post Hundreds of MetaMask wallets drained: What to check before you ‘update’ appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Total losses have reached about $107,000, and ZachXBT cautioned that the figure is likely to increase as the attack unfolds.
Crypto thefts topped $2.2 billion in 2025, on par with last year’s total, as attackers exploited a range of blockchain vulnerabilities.
In addition to a rising number of “private key/seed leaks," pcaversaccio pointed to "a concerning increase in physical attacks" in 2025.
This year’s defining security event was not a sophisticated DeFi exploit or a novel protocol failure, but the $1.46 billion theft from Bybit, a top-tier centralized exchange. That single event, attributed to sophisticated state-sponsored actors, rewrote the narrative of the year. It proved that while the frequency of attacks has dropped, the severity of the […]
The post Crypto hacks dropped by half in 2025, but the data reveals a much deadlier financial threat appeared first on CryptoSlate.
The intellectual property platform on Story Protocol lost about $3.9 million after a governance exploit, with stolen funds later routed through Tornado Cash.
North Korea is constantly evolving its tactics and will continue to use crypto hacks as a main source of revenue, Chainalysis said.
The hacker, who has already bridged the $3.9 million worth of stolen tokens to other chains, will not be affected by the network's planned rollback.
Coinbase said a former customer support agent was arrested in India as investigators probe a breach tied to insider bribery and customer data theft. Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong said on Dec. 27 that the arrest involved a former support agent and thanked Hyderabad Police for assistance in the ongoing investigation. The update puts attention […]
The post Coinbase claims arrest in the $355 million insider extortion scheme that targeted nearly 70,000 customers appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Trust Wallet has pledged to compensate all users after an unknown hacker injected malicious code into its Chrome extension, stealing $7 million in crypto.
Trust Wallet's Chrome extension shipped a malicious update in December, exfiltrating wallet data and draining roughly $7 million from hundreds of accounts before the company pushed a fix. The compromised version 2.68 was live for days, auto-updating in the background, the way browser extensions are designed to. Users who followed every standard self-custody rule, such […]
The post How browser extensions expose crypto to a fatal design flaw the industry ignored, bleeding $713M in 2025 appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Trust Wallet told users to disable its Chrome browser extension version 2.68 after the company acknowledged a security incident and pushed version 2.69 on Dec. 25, following reports of wallet drains tied to the Dec. 24 update. According to BleepingComputer, victims and researchers began flagging thefts soon after 2.68 rolled out. Early public tallies placed […]
The post Hidden script caught harvesting private keys as Trust Wallet issues emergency warning for Chrome users appeared first on CryptoSlate.
There's always something going on in the crypto space, and this year was no exception. We take a look back at 2025's highlights.
While Polymarket did not name the third-party provider, some users speculated on social media that the vulnerability is linked to Magic Labs.
The victim of a similar $71 million address poisoning attack in 2024 managed to recover nearly all available funds, lending hope to the scam's latest victim.
Personal wallet hacks and private key breaches on centralized services are on the rise while DeFi hacks remain suppressed, Chainalysis said.
Binance co-CEO Yi He said her WeChat account was hijacked on Dec. 10 after a cell number tied to the profile was reclaimed and could not be recovered at first. The account was later restored after Binance worked with WeChat’s security team, according to a spokesperson cited the same day. Posts that appeared after the […]
The post Binance CEO had WeChat hacked by cellphone exploit that likely leaves your own crypto exposed appeared first on CryptoSlate.
The hacker spent 19,479 USDT to buy 21.16 million of the tokens, making around $55,000 from the subsequent pump, according to Lookonchain.
In Malaysia’s illegal Bitcoin (BTC) mining hotspots, the hunt begins in the sky. Drones buzz over rows of shops and abandoned houses, sweeping for pockets of unexpected heat, which is the thermal signature of machines that shouldn’t be running. On the ground, police carry handheld sensors that sniff out irregular power use. Sometimes the pursuit […]
The post Bitcoin thieves stole $1.1B using fake bird noises: Now Malaysia hunts heat signatures from the sky appeared first on CryptoSlate.
A British hacker tied to the $243 million Genesis creditor theft has possibly been arrested in Dubai, according to onchain sleuth ZachXBT.
North Korean operatives were caught on camera, live, after security researchers lured them into a booby-trapped “developer laptop,” capturing how the Lazarus-linked crew tried to blend into a US crypto job pipeline using legitimate AI hiring tools and cloud services. The evolution in state-sponsored cybercrime was reportedly captured in real time by researchers at BCA […]
The post Secret footage from a rigged laptop exposes how North Korean spies are slipping past your security team appeared first on CryptoSlate.
"Code is Law" co-director James Craig and Wildcat Finance co-founder Lawrence Day discuss their experiences with, and the consequences of, major DeFi hacks.
Yearn Finance lost about $9 million in an exploit on Sunday, after an attacker was able to mint a near-infinite amount of yETH tokens.
The following article is adapted from The Block’s newsletter, The Daily, which comes out on weekday afternoons.
When Upbit detected unauthorized withdrawals of roughly $36 million in Solana tokens from a hot wallet on Nov. 27, CEO Oh Kyung-seok went on record within hours. He stated: “The entire amount will be covered by Upbit’s holdings, with no impact on customer assets.” Six years earlier, Upbit said the same thing after losing 342,000 […]
The post $36 million Upbit hack revives the quiet truth about hot-wallet ‘insurance’ appeared first on CryptoSlate.
The complex attack took place in a single transaction, and appears to have involved liquid staking tokens from across the Ethereum ecosystem.
The following article is adapted from The Block’s newsletter, The Daily, which comes out on weekday afternoons.