The alleged exploiter of the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Mango Markets, Avraham Eisenberg, is seeking to keep his share of crypto gained from his so-called “highly profitable trading strategy.” On Feb. 15 attorneys for Eisenberg filed an opposition in a New York District Court to a lawsuit from Mango that asked for $47 million in damages plus interest starting from the time of Eisenberg’s October 2022 attack that drained around $117 million from the protocol. The lawyers argued that Eisenberg shouldn’t need to pay back any more funds to the DeFi platform due to a settlement agreement he reached with …

Cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Huobi have again frozen accounts linked to the $100 million Harmony Horizon bridge attack on Jun. 24, 2022. Around $1.4 million worth of crypto frozen by the trading platforms came from accounts linked to the notorious Lazarus Group operating out of North Korea. The investigation was carried out by blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, according to a report shared by the firm on Feb. 14. However, the firm didn’t state what coins or tokens were frozen. Exchanges @binance and @HuobiGlobal today froze accounts containing $1.4 million stolen by North Korea’s Lazarus Group. This was made possible thanks …

Cyber criminals used a variety of novel ways to carry out hacks and exploits in 2022, with over $2.8 billion of cryptocurrency stolen last year. According to a report from CoinGecko using data sourced from DeFiYield’s REKT Database, nearly half of the total crypto stolen in 2022 was fleeced using diverse methods. This includes bypassing verification processes, market manipulation, ‘crowd looting’ as well as smart contract and bridge exploits. The biggest hack of 2022 was carried out through an access control hack. Sky Mavis, the developer behind popular game Axie Infinity, saw its Ronin bridge hacked in March 2022, leading …

Popular crypto wallet provider MetaMask warned investors against ongoing phishing attempts by scammers attempting to contact users through NameCheap’s third-party upstream system for emails. On the evening of Feb. 12, web hosting company NameCheap detected the misuse of one of its third-party services for sending some unauthorized emails — which directly targeted MetaMask users. Namecheap described the incident as an "email gateway issue." ⚠️MetaMask does not collect KYC info and will never email you about your account! Do not enter your Secret Recovery Phrase on a website EVER. If you got an email today from MetaMask or Namecheap or anyone …

The ill-gotten crypto from one of the industry’s largest exploits is on the move again, with on-chain data showing another $46 million of stolen funds has just shifted from the hacker’s wallet. The Wormhole attack was the third largest crypto hack in 2022 resulting from an exploit of Wormhole’s token bridge in February 2022. Around $321 million of Wrapped ETH (wETH) was stolen. According to blockchain security firm PeckShield, the hacker’s associated wallet has become active once again, moving d $46 million worth of crypto assets. This was made up of around 24,400 of Lido Finance-wrapped Ethereum staking token (wstETH), …

Crypto hardware wallet provider OneKey says it has already addressed a vulnerability in its firmware that allowed one of its hardware wallets to be hacked in one second flat. On Feb. 10, a video on YouTube posted by cybersecurity startup Unciphered showed they had figured out a way to exploit a "Massive critical vulnerability" in order o "crack open" a OneKey Mini. According to Eric Michaud, a partner at Unciphered, by disassembling the device and inserting coding, it was possible to return the OneKey Mini to “factory mode” and bypass the security pin, allowing a potential attacker to remove the …

Web3 infrastructure firm Jump Crypto has discovered a vulnerability in the Binance BNB Beacon Chain, which would allow the mint of an unlimited amount of arbitrary tokens. The issue was privately disclosed to the BNB team, enabling a patch to be developed and deployed within 24 hours. In a blog post from Feb. 10, Jump Crypto disclosed a detailed report about the vulnerability found two days earlier, which could "have led to a large loss of funds." As per the report, the BNB Chain is composed of two blockchains - the EVM compatible Smart Chain (BSC), which is based on …

Data from Etherscan shows that some crypto scammers are targeting users with a new trick that allows them to confirm a transaction from the victim’s wallet, but without having the victim’s private key. The attack can only be performed for transactions of 0 value. However, it may cause some users to accidentally send tokens to the attacker as a result of cutting and pasting from a hijacked transaction history. Blockchain security firm SlowMist discovered the new technique in December and revealed it in a blog post. Since then, both SafePal and Etherscan have adopted mitigation techniques to limit its effect …

Decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol CoW Swap recently suffered an attack, losing at least 550 BNB (BNB) in a contract exploit that approved fund transfers from the protocol. Blockchain surveyor MevRefund flagged the event and detected that the funds seemed to be moving away from CoW Swap. The MEV searcher warned the DEX and its users of the exploit in a Twitter thread. @CoWSwap your funds appear to be moooving away ...https://t.co/li1NkXNeUp — MevRefund (@MevRefund) February 7, 2023 According to the Smart contract auditing firm BlockSec, a wallet address was added as a “solver” of CoW Swap by a multisig. Then, …

The co-founder of Web3 metaverse game engine “Webaverse” has revealed they were victims of a $4 million crypto h after meeting with scammers posing as investors in a hotel lobby in Rome. The bizarre aspect of the story, according to co-founder Ahad Shams, is that the crypto was stolen from a newly set up Trust Wallet and that the hack took place during the meeting at some point. He claims the thieves could not have possibly seen the private key, nor was he connected to a public WiFi network at the time. The thieves were somehow able to gain access …

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has seized two non-fungible tokens (NFTs) worth more than $100,000 and 86.5 Ether (ETH) from a reported phishing scammer. The alleged scammer in question, Chase Senecal — known as Horror (HZ) online — was initially exposed via a lengthy investigation by independent blockchain sleuth ZachXBT posted back in September. In the FBI’s official notification posted on Feb. 3, it outlined that Seneca’s property — which also included an Audemars Piguet (AP) Royal Oak Watch worth $41,000 — was “seized for federal forfeiture for violation of federal law.” The FBI’s notification did not detail much …

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. 2023 started on a bullish note for the entire crypto market, including the DeFi ecosystem, with most of the tokens posting double-digit gains in January and recording multi-month highs. Aside from the bull rally, January also saw a 93% year-on-year decline in losses from DeFi exploits and hacks. The slew of regulatory action against the Mango Markets exploiter is being hailed as a big win for the DeFi sector. The United States Securities and …