Security
Anthropic Opens Claude's Cyber Capabilities to Verified Defenders as AI Scanning Tally Passes 134,000 Findings
The expanded Cyber Verification Program merges Project Glasswing into three access tiers for verified security professionals, with fewer automated blocks on malware analysis and vulnerability testing — and new numbers on what AI-driven scanning has already found.
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One beat: the security of crypto.TrustGrade Cybersecurity Crypto News reports hacks and exploits, audit findings, enforcement and takedowns, phishing and malware operations, and incident analysis. Every story is verified against at least two independent sources or on-chain evidence before it runs — no price predictions, no token promotion, no noise. Trust data comes from TrustGrade, the trust layer for crypto.
Latest News
Crypto 'Godfather' Adam Iza Sentenced to 78 Months in $37 Million Meta Fraud Case
A federal judge in Los Angeles ordered the 26-year-old, already serving 15 years for an attempted Bitcoin robbery in Connecticut, to pay $23.4 million restitution for defrauding Meta of more than $37 million, evading taxes on the proceeds, and hiring off-duty LASD deputies to harass his rivals — a scheme that has now produced convictions against five former deputies.
Bitget Hack Laundering Generated $761,000 in Protocol Fees, On-Chain Analysis Finds
Independent researcher Andrey Sergeenkov traced $761,725 in fees collected by THORChain liquidity providers, MetaMask, Chainflip and CoW EthFlow while moving the $387.5 million stolen from Bitget — and followed $259,718 in THORChain affiliate fees to seven addresses with additional financial links to the laundering wallets, one trail ending at an OKX hot wallet.
FinCEN Withdraws Crypto Mixer Rule and Self-Hosted Wallet Proposal
The Treasury bureau formally pulled two proposals — the 2023 rule that would have treated crypto mixing as a primary money laundering concern and the 2020 'unhosted wallet' identity-verification rule — saying the mixer definition risked a chilling effect on legitimate activity and that neither rule was tailored to its purpose.
Flash Loan Attacks Drained $1.2 Billion From DeFi in Four Years, Peer-Reviewed Study Finds
A University of Winchester study published in the Journal of Financial Crime scanned 20.63 billion transactions across seven blockchains, counting 254 successful DeFi attacks and $6.568 billion in losses between February 2020 and July 2024 — including 72 flash loan incidents worth $1.211 billion that grew more sophisticated and harder to predict over time.
CertiK's Intel3D Report: Agentic AI Joins the Crypto Security Workforce, but Humans Keep the Accountability
A new CertiK report describes autonomous AI agents taking on smart contract analysis, live transaction monitoring and cross-chain fund tracing as attacks accelerate — while warning that agents with authority to act create their own attack surface, from prompt injection to confident wrong answers.
Citrix Patches NetScaler Zero-Day Exploited in Targeted Attacks — the Appliance Layer Bitget's Breach Exposed
Citrix released emergency fixes for CVE-2026-88779, a high-severity NetScaler ADC and Gateway flaw exploited as a zero-day against SAML-enabled deployments — including instances patched days earlier — weeks after Mandiant's Bitget report showed third-party security appliances as the entry path to a $387M theft.
X Money Bridge 'Revenue' Linked to USDG Wallet Draining via Permit Signatures, Salus Says
Security firm Salus reports that users of Revenue, an unofficial X Money-to-crypto bridge, were drained through permit signatures granting unlimited USDG spending approval, with stolen funds split 20/80 between two attacker addresses — a pattern resembling Inferno's drainer-as-a-service model, though no infrastructure link was established.
Undercover With the Launderers: ZachXBT Details Infiltration of Chinese Syndicate Suspected of Moving $1B+ for Lazarus
In an October 5 disclosure, blockchain investigator ZachXBT describes posing as a client of a Chinese organized crime network he alleges laundered more than $1 billion for North Korea's Lazarus Group, tracing a cluster of over $12 million in Bybit exploit funds and enabling a 442,000 USDT freeze by Tether.
Unidentified Base Vault Drained of $6M in wstETH After Multisig Whitelist Flip
An unnamed vault on Base lost 1,783 wstETH (about $6 million) after an attacker-controlled contract was removed from the vault's whitelist and re-enabled one minute later with valid multisig signatures — the fourth Aave-linked or Base incident in a week, according to Blockaid, PeckShield, CertiK and ExVul.
Bitget Trail Narrows: Chainalysis Attributes $387M Theft to North Korean Actors, BitOK Tracks 87.8 BTC
Chainalysis says the September 24 Bitget breach was DPRK-attributed, pushing North Korean-linked crypto theft past $1 billion in 2026, while a BitOK trace pins 87.82 BTC in ten unspent outputs and Mandiant's preliminary report describes a supply-chain path through third-party security appliances into Bitget's wallet job server.
Microsoft Confirms X Account Hijack Used to Push Fake Clippy Token
Unknown attackers compromised Microsoft's 13-million-follower X account to amplify a Clippy-impersonation account promoting a $Clippy token claimed to pair with $MSFT stock — a confirmed unauthorized-access incident that shows verified brand accounts remain prime pump-and-dump infrastructure.
NEAR Intents Closes $3.8M Exploit Probe After Funds Returned On-Chain With an Apology
NEAR Intents says the full $3.8 million taken in an October 1 exploit of its cross-chain system has been returned — confirmed by a BNB Chain transaction whose input data carried a message from the address labeled 'Near Intents Exploiter 1' — and the team has stopped its investigation, urging researchers to use bug bounties.
Security Digest — October 5, 2026: Base's Rough Week, GoldPesa Hook Drain, September Losses Confirmed Worst of Year
Today's roundup: Base absorbs a cluster of Aave-linked incidents in a single week — FlashLoopAdapter ($305K), an allegedly drained GoldPesa hook ($114K) and a $6M vault drain — while CertiK confirms September as 2026's worst month for losses at ~$766M and Bitget completes its withdrawal restoration.
Bitget, Ten Days On: $1.1 Million Frozen of $388 Million Stolen as Attribution Splits
Roughly 0.3 percent of the September 24 theft has been frozen, the CEO says most of the rest is probably gone, and analysts disagree on whether North Korean actors are behind the largest exchange hack of 2026.
NEAR Intents Attacker Returns Full $3.8 Million After 48-Hour Ultimatum
The cross-chain protocol says the entire amount stolen in the October 1 Omni exploit has been returned after the attacker was identified, and that it has halted its investigation — a rare full recovery in a year of major thefts.
Security Digest: AI Tracing in the Bitget Case, THORChain's Freeze Refusal, and a Critical DEX223 Finding
The week's smaller security stories: Chainalysis reportedly compressed 20 hours of cross-chain tracing into minutes, the THORChain censorship debate deepens, and an independent researcher published critical findings against DEX223's contracts.
FBI's First Cyber Fugitive Faces US Court Over ATM Malware Tied to TRON Laundering Network
Anibal Canelon Aguirre, the alleged developer of Ploutus ATM jackpotting malware, appeared in a Nebraska courtroom after capture in Venezuela — days after OFAC sanctioned ten targets and seven TRON addresses tied to the Tren de Aragua cash-to-crypto pipeline.
Fake Safe, Real Keys: Aave 'Loop' Module Exploit Drains 114 ETH From Two Multisigs
SlowMist says an access-control flaw in FlashLoopAdapter — a third-party Safe module for leveraged Aave v3 positions — let an attacker spoof module authentication, repay vault debt with a flash loan, and extract 114 ETH. Aave's core contracts were not affected.
Bitget Has Frozen $1.1 Million of the $388 Million Hack — 'Not Expecting to Recover a Lot'
CEO Gracy Chen told CNBC the exchange has frozen roughly 0.3% of the $387.5 million stolen in September's third-party zero-day breach, cautioned that frozen does not mean returned, and said Bitget replenished its protection fund with its own capital as withdrawals fully reopened.
Drift Opens $295M Recovery Claims — Victims Face About One Cent on the Dollar
Six months after the April 1 exploit drained about $295.4 million from the Solana perp DEX, the Drift Foundation has opened DFX recovery-token claims: one DFX per USDT of verified losses, with initial redemptions near 0.0104 USDT as a roughly 3.11 million USDT pool begins payouts.