Crypto Chaos: A $27M Phishing Disaster & the Dumbest Wallet Ever

by

Well, it looks like someone’s crypto dreams turned into a $27 million nightmare overnight. According to blockchain security folks-because of course they’re the ones breaking the bad news-a DeFi trader, who shall remain nameless (but probably should have read the manual), got a little too friendly with a phishing scam. Spoiler: nobody likes a scammer, even if they wear digital masks.

PeckShield, the blockchain snoopers, spilled the tea on Tuesday, revealing that a user of Venus Protocol, a platform that sounds like some kind of celestial dating app, lost a shocking $27 million worth of crypto. Yep, vanished-poof! All thanks to someone convincing the poor user to give trusted permissions. Because nothing screams “trustworthy” like clicking a suspicious link from an ‘unknown’ sender and signing away your life savings.

This scam involved a classic move: pretending to be someone legitimate (the fake official-looking email or website, you see). The victim-probably distracted by memes or a particularly persuasive tweet-signed off on something malicious, and suddenly the attacker was able to siphon all sorts of stablecoins and crypto from their wallet. The wallet? Oh, just holding around $19.8 million in Venus USDT and $7.15 million in Venus USDC. No big deal, just enough to make you choke on your avocado toast.

Venus Protocol hits pause-likely to find the snacks they dropped during the panic

In true “Let’s pretend we know what we’re doing” style, Venus Protocol’s social media team took to X (or Twitter, if you insist) to assure everyone that their smart contracts are pristine-no bugs!-but, to be safe, they’re hitting the brakes on their protocol to go all CSI on the security. Because nothing solves a crypto disaster like a good ol’ pause button. As they politely implied, yes, it was probably the user’s fault for that questionable click.

“Right now, it appears to be user error, but we’re investigating,” they chirped, probably with a slightly shaky tone while frantically checking their own security measures.

September: The month of hacking hurt-by the dozen

This latest incident is basically just a warm-up for the chaos that’s been seeping out of the crypto closet-allegedly, as investors lose their minds. Earlier this week, World Liberty Financial’s (WLFI-sounds like a fancy bank, doesn’t it?) governance tokens got phished, again thanks to some wallet exploit. Because why not keep the party going?

Meanwhile, Bunni-no, not the adorable pet-paused all smart contract transactions on its Ethereum-based platform after security folks noticed a breach that cost about $2.3 million. The bad guys are on a roll, folks, and August’s losses (a cool $163 million in total!) are just the warm-up act.

Crypto, it seems, is turning into the Wild West-if the Wild West was full of hackers all donning digital bandanas.

Is it too late to trust anything anymore? Maybe it’s time to just switch to gold, or, you know, a piggy bank.

Read More

2025-09-02 15:03