On-Chain Security

Blockstream

2026-09-11 14:42:37

Blockstream Refuses to Pay Ransom After Liquid Bitcoin Exploit

Blockstream said on Sept. 11 that it will not pay a ransom tied to bitcoin taken through the recent Liquid Network exploit. Liquid had reported a day earlier that 3,400 BTC had already been returned, while about 598.5 BTC remained outstanding as of 19:10 UTC on Sept. 8. Blockstream said the unauthorized taking and continued withholding of the funds constituted theft rather than white-hat security research, and warned that if the remaining bitcoin is not returned it will work with law enforcement, exchanges, service providers, and forensic specialists to trace the assets and identify those responsible. The exploit itself stemmed from a vulnerability in how nodes running the open-source Elements software cached range-proof verifications, allowing roughly 4,000 unbacked L-BTC to be treated as valid and converted into BTC through the standard peg-out process. Liquid has since resumed block production and transactions, and the emergency Elements v23.3.4 release is now available, but peg-outs remain disabled while the final stage of recovery continues.

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ether.fi

2026-09-11 09:36:54

SlowMist says ether.fi AtomicQueue flaw led to theft of about 15.45 ETH

SlowMist said ether.fi’s AtomicQueue contract was exploited because the solve() function lacked access control, leading to the theft of about 15.45 ETH. According to the security alert, the attacker used updateAtomicRequest() to create a malicious request and forced a victim address to act as the solver. AtomicQueue then called the victim’s finishSolve and executed want.transferFrom, abusing an existing ERC-20 approval to move funds. SlowMist said it had privately disclosed the issue to the ether.fi team before making it public. The attacker address and the vulnerable contract address have also been released. The disclosure outlines a case in which previously granted token approvals were used in an unintended way through contract logic rather than through direct wallet compromise.

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SlowMist

2026-09-11 07:53:52

SlowMist says BeatXswap on BSC lost about $77,500 in price manipulation attack

BeatXswap, a project on BNB Smart Chain (BSC), was hit by a price manipulation attack that led to a loss of about 2.985 million BTX, or roughly $77,500, according to SlowMist. The security firm said the attacker borrowed 6 million BTX through a flash loan and sold the tokens into a Uniswap V3 pool to push the quoted price lower. The attacker then exploited a contract design flaw in which the protocol relied solely on the pool’s spot price as its pricing source. SlowMist said the contract had no time-weighted average price, or TWAP, protection, and no deviation limit. After moving the price, the attacker deposited USDT in two separate transactions, which triggered liquidity minting and allowed BTX to be withdrawn from the LP position. The incident adds to the list of attacks tied to spot-price oracle weaknesses and missing guardrails in on-chain pricing logic.

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ChainCatcher

2026-09-08 02:11:43

ChainCatcher Morning Brief: Korean memory inventory warning and Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP token plan lead a packed crypto cycle

ChainCatcher’s latest morning roundup spans a wide mix of crypto, macro, security and tech-capex developments from the past 24 hours. Bitcoin slipped nearly 1% to around $79,700 as rising oil prices, linked in the report to an escalation between the U.S. and Iran, added fresh pressure to risk assets. At the same time, spot crypto ETFs kept attracting money, with Bitcoin spot ETFs posting $987 million in weekly net inflows and Ethereum spot ETFs drawing $218 million, both marking a third straight week of net inflows. Beyond price action, several project and security updates stood out. Vitalik Buterin pushed back on claims that AI could break Bitcoin’s security assumptions, while Galaxy Research said roughly 45% of the assets stolen in the Coldcard “Wave 3” incident have now moved into cross-chain or mixing paths. Liquid Network and SideSwap also remained in focus after an exploit involving 4,000 L-BTC, and Blockstream said the vulnerability tied to the incident had been patched. On the corporate and policy front, KB Securities warned that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have memory inventories below 10 days, pointing to a tighter supply picture as AI infrastructure spending expands. The Wall Street Journal separately reported that Hunter Biden plans to launch a meme coin called LAPTOP on Base on Sept. 9, with a detailed token allocation, lockup and burn-or-charity framework tied to preset future events.

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Liquid

2026-09-07 16:06:06

Liquid attacker broadcasts return of 3,400 BTC, keeps 598 BTC after on-chain negotiation

The address that drained Blockstream’s Liquid federation wallet on Sunday has now broadcast a transaction returning 3,400 BTC to the federation while sending 598.49955894 BTC back to itself, leaving the attacker with roughly 15% of the 3,998.50 BTC originally withdrawn. According to The Defiant, the entire exchange between Blockstream and the attacker took place inside Bitcoin transactions through OP_RETURN messages, with Blockstream’s messages PGP-signed. The return transaction was still unconfirmed at 15:50 UTC Monday. It carries a 1,768-satoshi fee, a fee rate of 0.77 satoshis per virtual byte, and all 16 inputs are marked replace-by-fee. Earlier on Monday, the attacker wrote in plain text that it was "sending most back" to a specified address and asked, "is that ok." Blockstream later replied with a signed "Yes, thank you," followed by another signed message saying bridge nodes had been patched and it was safe to return the funds. SideSwap, whose peg-out authorization key was used in the incident, said a customer sent 4,000 L-BTC to its peg-out service and that Blockstream later determined the L-BTC had been created through a bug in Elements software. SideSwap said neither its key nor its systems were compromised.

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SlowMist

2026-09-07 03:46:54

SlowMist warns of copycat exploit setup on BSC using recent Notional Finance attack pattern

SlowMist has warned that it detected two attackers on BNB Smart Chain (BSC) attempting to replicate the exploit method used in a recent Notional Finance incident. According to the alert, the attackers have already completed the preparation stage and created malicious fCash positions using the same vulnerability pattern. The attack has not been fully executed yet, as the positions are still waiting to mature. SlowMist said that once the positions reach maturity, the attackers may settle them and withdraw assets from the affected protocol. The security firm urged any impacted projects to take mitigation steps immediately and complete protective measures before the positions expire. The notice did not name the affected project beyond describing the observed setup on BSC.

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Balancer

2026-09-06 10:23:45

Balancer Suspected of V1 Attack; Attacker Profits $250K

On-chain detective Specter reports that Balancer may have been hit by a V1 attack, with an attacker continuously moving funds and netting $250,000 so far. The associated address is 0x112...E0aE.

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AI Agent

2026-09-02 08:33:10

After the KelpDAO exploit, the harder question is who verifies what AI agents see and sign

The April 18, 2026 exploit of KelpDAO’s rsETH bridge exposed a familiar weakness in crypto systems: the failure point was not core cryptography, but the chain of authority around who could sign, what data they relied on, and how those checks were configured. According to LayerZero’s incident report, attackers used social engineering to obtain a developer session key, poisoned an internal RPC used by LayerZero Labs’ DVN, and suppressed external RPC endpoints with a denial-of-service attack, leading the signing service to certify forged messages. KelpDAO had also shifted its validation path from 2-of-2 to 1-of-1 DVN, removing an independent cross-check. CrowdStrike and Mandiant attributed the attack with high confidence to the North Korea-linked TraderTraitor group, also tracked as UNC4899. The article argues that this matters even more as AI agents gain onchain execution power through smart accounts, strategy wallets, and limited signing services. A valid signature can show that an authorized path was invoked, but not that the input data was sound, the decision matched policy, or the trade should have happened at that moment. It reviews the limits of oracles, dispute resolution, multisig bridges, MPC custody, and TEE-based systems, then examines DeepSafe’s CRVA design, which combines hidden committee selection, Ring-VRF, threshold MPC, and TEE. The model aims to reduce validator exposure and signing concentration, but it does not automatically determine whether the result being verified is actually correct.

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