BlockThreat - Week 1, 2026
Unleash Protocol | PRXVT | Valinity | Doomcat
Greetings!
We are starting the new year with nearly $4 million in losses across four incidents, with the majority stemming from the Unleash Protocol hack on the Story chain.
Thanks to a detailed incident report published by the Unleash Protocol team, we now have visibility into a familiar phishing attack pattern:
Compromise of a privileged user via Telegram.
Distribution of a link to a look-alike Safe interface to other multisig signers.
A specially crafted transaction that reduced the consensus threshold to just 1.
Profit!
The critical control that could have detected this earlier beyond the initial account compromise was a multisig transaction verification. Such verification may have flagged the malicious proposal before execution. It is a painful lesson, but one the broader DeFi industry will hopefully adopt quickly.
You can find post-mortems, indicators, and other details for Unleash Protocol, PRXVT, Valinity, and other compromises in the premium section below.
Let’s dive into the news!
News
Ledger confirms customer data leaked in third-party Global-e breach.
Crypto exploit triage group SEAL sees uptick in tickets in 2025.
Crime
Bitfinex Hacker Behind $11 Billion Bitcoin Heist Credits Trump for Early Prison Release.
Crypto Thieves Move Offline to Terrorize Investors at Home by Bloomberg.
The Grisliest Bitcoin and Crypto Wrench Attacks That Grabbed Headlines in 2025.
Policy
Phishing
Hundreds of MetaMask wallets drained: What to check before you ‘update’.
Scam Sniffer 2025: Crypto Phishing Losses Fall 83% to $84 Million - Scam Sniffer.
Scams
Malware
DarkSpectre: Unmasking the Threat Actor Behind 8.8 Million Infected Browsers by Tuval Admoni,Gal Hachamov (Koi).
New GlassWorm malware wave targets Macs with trojanized crypto wallets.
Media
Behind the Keyboard with 2025 Watson of the Year, 0xSimao by Sherlock.
Trust X - Circuit Breakers: The Magic Pill to DeFi’s Security Problem?
Contests
Capture The Funds - Certora Next-Gen CTF. Congratulations winners!
Research
An AI security awesome list / learning journey by Bernhard Mueller.
Mage: Cracking Elliptic Curve Cryptography with Cross-Axis Transformers.
A Practical Guide to Finding Soundness Bugs in ZK Circuits..
Returndata Bombing RAI’s Liquidation Engine - A Critical Bug Worth $0 by Trust Security. As always not without a controversy.
Second-order effects of advances in AI auditors by Trust Security. We are already seeing them with a spike in old code exploitation.
Let LLM analyse an Etherscan verified contract > LLM has code execution capabilities > LLM listens to the instructions part of the verified source code comments > get rekt. A dangerous exploitation strategy by pcaversaccio.
What is a Blockchain, Actually? by Kian Paimani. A short online book containing all that I have learned and know about Web3 and blockchain in the last 7 years.
Tools
Onboardme - a highly experimental tool to help you understand smart contracts faster. Repo here. Pretty cool graphics, Hackers meets blockchain.
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