News linked to both this project and an event.
According to Cointelegraph, Bitcoin mining company MARA Holdings spent $4.3 million on CEO Fred Thiel’s personal security in 2025, including $430,780 for vehicle armor, as well as residential and personal security expenses. Filings show related spending for 2024 totaled $191,040. In the same year, MARA also spent $3.9 million on CFO Salman Khan’s personal security. The report notes that personal safety costs for companies are rising amid an increase in “wrench attacks” targeting cryptocurrency executives and investors.
Casa co-founder Jameson Lopp has warned of a new phishing attack, where attackers leverage legitimate Google account recovery forms to hide malicious links within large amounts of blank space. This technique involves embedding "invisible" or overlooked whitespace characters within long text, making the malicious link less noticeable to users, thereby tricking them into clicking and exposing their account information.Lopp advises users to remain vigilant when handling account recovery emails or forms, and to avoid clicking on links that are from unknown sources or intentionally hidden. (Cointelegraph)
According to Cointelegraph, privacy-focused messaging app Signal stated it may exit the Canadian market if required to comply with Canada’s proposed lawful access bill, Bill C-22. Udbhav Tiwari, Signal’s Vice President of Strategy and Global Affairs, said the bill could compel service providers to build technical surveillance capabilities and retain certain user metadata for up to one year—potentially undermining end-to-end encryption and increasing the risk of cyberattacks. The report notes that Bill C-22 has not yet entered into force and still requires parliamentary review and royal assent. In addition to Signal, VPN provider Windscribe has also indicated it may follow suit and withdraw from Canada if the bill is passed.
According to Cointelegraph, Tezos ecosystem developers have launched the quantum-resistant privacy payment prototype TzEL on the testnet. TzEL employs post-quantum cryptography and zk-STARK proofs to defend against “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, safeguarding transaction data and encrypted payment metadata. The prototype also integrates Tezos’ data availability layer to handle the relatively large size of post-quantum proofs. According to the whitepaper, the quantum-resistant zk-STARK proofs used by TzEL are approximately 300 KB in size. TzEL is currently running on the Tezos testnet, and the Tezos ecosystem’s transition to post-quantum cryptography remains in its early stages.
According to Cointelegraph, a New York judge has postponed the hearing on Aave’s emergency motion to unfreeze approximately $71 million worth of ETH and ordered Aave and Gerstein Harrow LLP to submit additional case briefs. A new hearing is scheduled for June 5. The court noted that Aave previously failed to adequately explain why users’ funds would suffer “derivative losses” if the restraining order remained in effect. The assets in question are linked to the Kelp DAO hack, which involved approximately $293 million and was previously frozen by Arbitrum. The judge also directed both parties to further clarify several legal issues, including the applicable law governing the hacker’s transactions, the legal distinction between fraud and theft, the priority ranking of creditors’ claims, the applicability of constructive trust, and whether assets can be proportionally returned to victims.
According to Cointelegraph, Marlon Ferro, a 20-year-old man from California known online as “GothFerrari,” was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $2.5 million in restitution for his involvement in a cryptocurrency theft ring responsible for over $250 million in losses. Prosecutors stated that when co-conspirators were unable to remotely breach victims’ systems or trick them into surrendering their crypto assets, Ferro carried out physical break-ins to steal hardware wallets containing the funds. The group operated from late 2023 through early 2025 and its members were also involved in database intrusions, target identification, scam phone calls, and money laundering. The investigation was led by the FBI and the IRS Criminal Investigation Division.
According to Cointelegraph, Coinbase has been sued in a U.S. federal court in California over frozen funds linked to a $55 million DAI phishing theft that occurred in 2024. The plaintiffs allege that some traceable stolen funds—after being mixed via Tornado Cash—were deposited into Coinbase retail user accounts and remain frozen. Coinbase states it can only release the assets after a court rules on their ownership. The complaint also links the theft to the malicious wallet drainer platform Inferno Drainer. Victims had engaged Zero Shadow and Five Stones Intelligence to track the stolen funds.
Kelp DAO has announced the migration of its restaking token rsETH to Chainlink CCIP, citing enhanced security as the reason for this move. Previously, a cross-chain bridge built by Kelp DAO on LayerZero was attacked on April 18, with hackers stealing approximately 116,500 rsETH, valued at around $292 million, and using the assets as collateral to borrow WETH on Aave v3.Regarding the cause of the vulnerability, LayerZero previously stated that the issue stemmed from Kelp DAO using a single DVN verification path configuration rather than multiple independent verifications. Kelp DAO responded that this configuration was the default setting and that LayerZero had confirmed its security without flagging any related risks. LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino subsequently denied this claim, stating that Kelp DAO had proactively modified the default multi-DVN configuration. Both parties continue to dispute responsibility for the incident. (Cointelegraph)
According to Cointelegraph, DeFi protocol Aave filed an emergency motion in New York on Monday seeking to vacate a restraining notice issued by U.S. law firm Gerstein Harrow LLP, which prevents the Arbitrum DAO from transferring 30,766 ETH to victims of the Kelp exploit. Gerstein Harrow LLP served the restraining notice on the Arbitrum DAO last Friday, asserting that its client is entitled to over $877 million in damages under a default judgment against North Korea. The firm claims that the North Korean hacking group behind the April 18 Kelp exploit previously held these tokens and that its client therefore holds a legal claim to the relevant ETH.
According to Cointelegraph, U.S. law firm Gerstein Harrow LLP has filed an application with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York seeking a temporary restraining order and three writs of execution to prevent the Arbitrum DAO from transferring 30,766 ETH (valued at approximately $73 million) frozen following the Kelp vulnerability. The firm argues that its clients obtained default judgments against North Korea in U.S. courts in 2010, 2015, and 2016, entitling them to roughly $877 million in compensation—and contends that the stolen ETH constitutes North Korean-linked assets that should be used to satisfy those judgments. Kelp DAO suffered a $292 million hack on April 18; the attacker was identified as TraderTraitor, a subgroup of the North Korean state-sponsored hacking group Lazarus Group. Aave Labs previously proposed unfreezing the seized funds and transferring them into the “DeFi United” fund to compensate rsETH holders—but this legal action by Gerstein Harrow may significantly delay compensation for victims. Members of the Arbitrum DAO community have criticized the move, arguing it shifts the burden of North Korea’s debts onto another set of victims, thereby exacerbating the original harm. Gerstein Harrow had previously pursued litigation related to the 2023 Heco Bridge hack involving Teth
According to Cointelegraph, the Arbitrum Committee voted to unfreeze $71 million worth of Ethereum to mitigate the $290 million loss caused by the Kelp DAO vulnerability.
Andre Cronje stated most current decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols no longer qualify as "DeFi in the strict sense" and are closer to commercial systems operated by teams. This has sparked industry division over whether "circuit breakers" should be introduced to mitigate attack risks.In an interview, Andre Cronje pointed out that early DeFi centered on immutable smart contracts, but today many protocols rely on upgradeable contracts, multi-signature permissions, off-chain infrastructure, and manual operational processes. In essence, they have transitioned from "immutable public goods" to "operable, for-profit businesses." He noted that against the backdrop of recent security incidents, including DeFi attacks involving approximately $280 million and $293 million, industry risks have expanded from simple smart contract vulnerabilities to "Web2-style risks" such as infrastructure issues, permission controls, and social engineering attacks.Regarding risk management, Cronje's firm Flying Tulip recently introduced circuit breakers that delay or queue withdrawals during abnormal fund outflows, providing an emergency response window of about six hours to prevent systemic bank runs and further losses.However, this mechanism has also sparked controversy. Michael Egorov believes that circuit breakers may introduce new centralized attack surfaces. If controlled by signers or administrators, they could instead become new security vulnerabilities or sources of freezing risk. He emphasized that DeFi design should minimize human intervention rather than increase manual control points. Industry analysts pointed out that this debate essentially reflects how DeFi is shifting from the ideal model of "code is law" toward a practical architecture of "hybrid governance plus operational control," while the security boundaries are being redefined. (Cointelegraph)
According to Cointelegraph, Robinhood users have recently fallen victim to a phishing attack. Attackers exploited Gmail’s feature of ignoring periods (“.”) in email usernames, along with a vulnerability in Robinhood’s account creation process, to register accounts with email addresses highly similar to those of their targets. This enabled them to trick Robinhood’s official email server into delivering spoofed alert emails containing phishing links directly to victims’ inboxes. Cybersecurity researcher Alex Eckelberry noted that these emails pass SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication checks and thus appear to originate from Robinhood’s official domain. Robinhood stated that this incident does not involve any breach of its systems or customer accounts, and user funds and personal information remain unaffected. However, the company urges users to delete such emails and avoid clicking any suspicious links.
: The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that a 22-year-old California man, Evan Tangeman, has been sentenced to 70 months (approximately 5 years and 10 months) in prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release, for his involvement in a criminal organization that stole approximately $263 million in crypto assets through social engineering fraud and home invasions.According to court documents, Tangeman pleaded guilty in December 2025, admitting to helping the criminal network launder at least $3.5 million in illicit funds.The criminal group allegedly used the stolen funds for lavish spending, including multi-million dollar nightclub bills, Lamborghini sports cars, and high-end assets like Rolex watches.U.S. District Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, stated in a release that the organization "built a criminal system based on nearly absurd greed," emphasizing that Tangeman not only participated in money laundering but also destroyed evidence after his accomplices were arrested, demonstrating clear criminal intent.This sentencing comes as data shows that the crypto industry suffered $482 million in losses from scams and hacks in the first quarter of 2026, with social engineering fraud and physical violent robberies on the rise. (Cointelegraph)
According to Cointelegraph, the widespread adoption of AI is driving up the number of submissions to cryptocurrency industry bug bounty programs—but a flood of low-quality “AI spam” reports has also emerged, placing a heavy burden on protocol teams for triaging. Barry Plunkett, Co-CEO of Cosmos Labs, stated that submission volume to its platform surged 900% year-on-year, with 20–50 reports received daily; Kadan Stadelmann, CTO of Komodo Platform, likewise noted a marked rise in low-quality and false-positive reports, attributing the root cause primarily to AI’s drastic reduction in the cost of generating reports. Daniel Stenberg, creator of the open-source tool curl, has already shut down his bug bounty program outright due to being overwhelmed. In response, industry insiders recommend that teams deploy defensive AI systems to automatically triage reports and adopt stricter submission criteria—reducing the volume of invalid reports and ensuring genuine vulnerabilities receive timely attention.
Odaily News: Privacy protocol Umbra has shut down its hosted frontend website to prevent attackers from using the protocol to transfer stolen funds from a recent security incident. Umbra stated that approximately $800,000 in funds were transferred through its protocol, but the protocol only hides the recipient's identity, and the related transactions can still be tracked on-chain. This measure follows the attack on the Kelp protocol, which resulted in losses exceeding $280 million. Umbra said it will restore frontend services after confirming it does not affect asset recovery efforts, but it cannot prevent users from continuing to use the protocol via smart contracts or self-hosted frontends. (Cointelegraph)
According to Cointelegraph, Admiral Samuel Paparo of the U.S. Navy stated at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee that Bitcoin is a “valuable computer science tool,” and that its proof-of-work technology holds significant applications in cybersecurity—increasing attackers’ costs and enabling the protection of data, information, and command signals, thereby supporting U.S. national security interests. Paparo noted: “Beyond the economic dimension, it has extremely important computer science applications in cybersecurity.” Earlier, in 2023, Jason Lowery of the U.S. Space Force expressed a similar view.
According to Cointelegraph, DefiLlama data shows that there have been 518 hacking incidents in the crypto space over the past decade, resulting in cumulative losses exceeding $1.7 billion. A significant portion of these losses stemmed from private key leaks, phishing attacks, and other credential-based attacks. As smart contract security continues to improve, attackers are increasingly shifting their focus toward wallet security, signature infrastructure, development tools, and user operations. Recently, Kelp DAO’s rsETH cross-chain bridge was attacked, with approximately 116,500 rsETH tokens stolen—valued at roughly $290–293 million at the time of the incident.
According to Cointelegraph, stablecoin issuer Circle faces a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts for failing to freeze stolen funds during the Drift Protocol hack on April 1. Plaintiffs allege that attackers transferred approximately $230 million worth of USDC from Solana to Ethereum via Circle’s cross-chain transfer protocol (CCTP) within hours—and that Circle failed to intervene. The lawsuit accuses Circle of aiding and abetting conversion and of negligence. Cryptocurrency analytics firm Elliptic previously suspected the attack may be linked to North Korea–backed hackers; the stolen funds were subsequently converted into ETH and laundered through Tornado Cash.
According to Cointelegraph, Jean-Didier Berger, representative of France’s Minister of the Interior, stated at Paris Blockchain Week that France is preparing new measures to protect cryptocurrency holders. He revealed that authorities have launched a preventive platform, which has already attracted thousands of registrants, and are jointly developing a more robust response plan with Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez—expected to be implemented within the coming weeks. Against this backdrop, 41 crypto-related kidnappings have occurred in France in 2026—averaging one every 2.5 days. Globally, such “wrench attacks” rose 75% year-on-year in 2025, with France being the most severely affected country worldwide, accounting for approximately 40% of all such incidents in Europe.