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CoinStats decided to temporarily suspend user activity after a security breach impacted 1,590 wallets. Users with affected wallets were advised to transfer funds immediately while CoinStats works on mitigating the impact of the attack. This incident is part of a much broader trend of security breaches in the crypto industry, including Mark Cuban's Gmail hack and a MakerDAO delegate losing $11 million in a phishing scam. Meanwhile, Binance froze $5 million in stolen funds from a BtcTurk hack, and EigenLayer introduced new security measures to protect against Sybil and DDoS attacks.
CoinStats Breach Prompts Temporary Shutdown
CoinStats, a crypto portfolio manager, has decided to temporarily suspend user activity after a security breach that impacted 1,590 crypto wallets. In a Jun. 22 post on X, CoinStats announced that they are trying to mitigate the impact of the attack and that it will temporarily shut down to isolate the incident. The company reported that only 1.3% of all CoinStats wallets were affected and also assured users that none of the connected wallets and centralized exchanges (CEXes) were compromised.
The full extent of the breach is not clear yet, but CoinStats did promise to give updates as they become available. A Google document listing all of the affected wallets has been published by CoinStats, but it included a warning that the list might change as the investigation continues.
Users with affected wallets were advised to move their funds immediately using their exported private key. However, the crypto community has also warned victims to be very careful of scammers posing as helpers. Pseudonymous crypto commentator PPman specifically pointed out the risk of scammers reaching out to victims on the list or those who have publicly posted about using CoinStats.
This breach is part of a much broader trend of security incidents in the crypto industry. Crystal Intelligence recently revealed that there have been 785 reported hacks and exploits over the past 13 years. This resulted in almost $19 billion worth of digital assets being stolen since the first known crypto hack in June of 2011.
Mark Cuban's Gmail Hacked
CoinStats was, unfortunately, not the only crime victim over the past few days. Billionaire investor Mark Cuban also recently revealed he lost access to his Gmail account after falling victim to a hoax call, just months after losing more than $800,000 from his crypto wallet.
Mark Cuban X post (Source: X)
In a Jun. 22 X post, Cuban explained that someone posing as a Google employee tricked him into revealing his account credentials. He warned his 8.8 million followers not to trust any emails from his account. The post has since been deleted.
The crypto community seems to have taken pity on the billionaire as supportive messages have been flowing in. Others questioned if Cuban’s X account might also have been compromised.
This latest incident comes nine months after Cuban's hot wallet was drained of about $870,000, potentially by hackers who waited for him to log into MetaMask after a long period of inactivity. Independent blockchain investigator Wazz first noticed the hack because of suspicious activity in one of Cuban's wallets that had been dormant for five months.
Cuban is a very outspoken advocate for crypto, and also recently urged the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to regulate all crypto assets instead of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as he is unhappy with the SEC's enforcement-focused approach.
MakerDAO Delegate Loses $11M in Phishing Scam
Meanwhile, a MakerDAO governance delegate lost $11 million worth of Aave Ethereum Maker (aEthMKR) and Pendle USDe tokens in a phishing scam on Jun. 23. The incident was first detected by Scam Sniffer, and happened after the delegate signed multiple signatures, which then led to the theft of their digital assets.
The sender address “0xfb94d3404c1d3d9d6f08f79e58041d5ea95accfa” transferred 3,657 aEthMKR tokens to the recipient address “0x739772254924a57428272f429bd55f30eb36bb96,” and the transaction was confirmed within 11 seconds.
It was later revealed that the victim was a key player in the MakerDAO system who is responsible for voting on governance proposals and influencing important decisions in the Maker protocol. Typically, MakerDAO tokenholders and delegates vote on proposals that, if approved, are implemented after a waiting period known as the Governance Security Module (GSM).
Phishing scams, including "approval phishing," have been on the rise. These scams trick victims into signing transactions that grant scammers access to their wallets. Chainalysis also recently shared that pig-butchering scammers increasingly use this technique. Phishing scams often involve perpetrators posing as reputable entities to gather sensitive data. In this case, the delegate was tricked into signing multiple permit network phishing signatures.
A Scam Sniffer report earlier in 2024 revealed that phishing scams drained $300 million from 320,000 users in 2023.
Binance Freezes $5M in BtcTurk Hack
Meanwhile, Binance is helping Turkish crypto exchange BtcTurk investigate a malicious attack. So far, more than $5 million in stolen funds have been frozen, according to Binance CEO Richard Teng.
In a Jun. 22 post on X, Teng confirmed Binance's involvement and stated that $5.3 million in stolen funds have been frozen already. BtcTurk reported that the attack mainly affected holdings in hot wallets, which are linked to the internet and more vulnerable to hackers compared to offline cold storage. The exchange assured users that the majority of assets in cold wallets were still secure.
Teng informed his followers that Binance's investigations and security teams are working to protect the ecosystem from bad actors and will give more updates as more information becomes available. Blockchain investigator ZackXBT even praised Binance for its proactive moves to help victims. BtcTurk's CEO Özgür Güneri has not commented publicly on the incident just yet.
This incident happened after a very similar security breach at Switzerland-based crypto exchange Lykke, which stopped withdrawals after losing $19.5 million in a Jun. 4 exploit.
EigenLayer Adds Security
There are other companies also taking a more proactive approach to crypto crime. EigenLayer introduced a new security feature for its EigenDA data availability service on the Ethereum mainnet to prevent Sybil and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
According to an X post from EigenDA, the whitelist security measure employs either an IP address or Ethereum's elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) authentication to improve protection and secure access.
EigenLayer wants to protect its services with the new security feature, while making sure it is available to all clients. EigenDA’s free tier offers up to 768 kilobytes per 10-minute window, which is sufficient for most Ethereum rollups. It also allows partners to request increased throughput beyond the free tier for high-demand applications. EigenDA can handle synthetic loads of 0.6 megabytes per second and peak throughputs of up to 10 MB per second on the mainnet.
EigenLayer also plans to implement permissionless payments for blob throughput by the end of 2024, which makes it possible for users to reserve bandwidth at fixed rates for high throughput needs.
In May, EigenLayer completed the second phase of its EIGEN token airdrop, and ended up distributing 113 million EIGEN tokens, or 6.7% of the allocated supply for airdrops. Tokens will be locked until the end of Q3 2024, but users can take part in staking and delegation activities through the EigenLayer web portal.
EigenLayer was launched on the Ethereum mainnet in April of 2024,and has already amassed over $12 billion in deposits.
