Cybersecurity agency Hacken has blamed a non-public key leak that allowed a foul actor to mint and loot $250,000 value of the ecosystem’s native Hacken Token (HAI), inflicting it to plummet round 99% on Saturday.
In an X publish, Hacken mentioned the non-public key was linked to an account with a minting function on the Ethereum and BNB Chain, which led to the “unauthorized HAI minting and a dump” on decentralized exchanges — inflicting a 99% drop within the worth of HAI from $0.015 to $0.000056.
HAI is at the moment buying and selling at $0.00026.
Hacken staff members mentioned they’ve since revoked the compromised minter account from the token contract and regained management; nonetheless, primarily based on Hacken’s present estimates, the dangerous actor nonetheless managed to flee with at the least $250,000 value of tokens.
“The core infrastructure has all the time been separate from HAI infra and stays safe. There may be at the moment no proof of any compromise past the non-public keys,” Hacken mentioned.
Non-public key leak linked to bridge deployment
Hacken mentioned the non-public key was compromised throughout “architectural modifications” to the agency’s blockchain bridge, which had been being utilized “particularly to forestall dangers like this,” in line with Hacken.
“Hacken’s bridge was constructed at a time when the market and tech regarded very completely different. Redesigning a deployed bridge means migrating contracts — a posh authorized and technical course of,” the agency mentioned.
As a precaution, Hacken has paused bridge transactions on Ethereum and BNB Chain till additional discover and warned that there have been no airdrops deliberate and that any posts saying in any other case are scams.
Tokens purchased after hack not supported
Hacken CEO Dyma Budorin mentioned in an X publish on Sunday that each one tokens on the affected networks, BNB Good Chain and Ethereum, purchased after the hack “won’t be supported within the new tokenomics.”
“Our purpose was all the time to transform HAI right into a safety token that represents Hacken fairness and has crypto flexibility. Now’s the time to speed up the thought implementation,” he mentioned.
Hacken mentioned its long-term purpose now could be to rework HAI right into a regulated monetary instrument that merges token utility with fairness rights by merging HAI and Hacken’s fairness shareholders.
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All authentic consumer balances stay trackable, and HAI tokens may have the choice to swap later, with particulars coming quickly, in line with Hacken.
Hackers stole $1.6 billion in first quarter this yr
Blockchain safety agency PeckShield mentioned in an April report that hackers stole over $1.63 billion in crypto throughout the first quarter of 2025.
Extra lately, liquid staking protocol Meta pool suffered the same exploit on June 18, when an attacker was capable of mint 9,705 of the liquid staking protocol’s token mpETH value practically $27 million however solely managed to steal round 52.5 Ether (ETH), value simply over $132,000.
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