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The founder of a security firm warns that phishing attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated despite fewer incidents. A faulty smart contract has locked up $24 million worth of Lido-staked Solana. Meanwhile, U.S. authorities transferred billions of dollars worth of Silk Road-era Bitcoin.
Crypto phishing attacks reached “alarming levels” — CertiK co-founder
While the first quarter of 2024 seems “relatively typical” when it comes to hacks and exploits, Ronghui Gu, the co-founder of blockchain security firm CertiK, said the complexity of private key compromises and phishing attacks raises concerns.
losses attributed to private key compromises had increased significantly compared to the first quarter of 2023.
In its quarterly security report titled Hack3d, CertiK highlighted that losses from this attack reached $239 million there being only 26 incidents.
Compared to the same time period in 2023, when losses were only around $18.8 million, this quarter recorded a 1,171% increase in losses caused by compromised private keys.
Chart showing the number of incidents and amount lost for Q1 2024. Source: CertiK
“Broken” contract leaves $24 million Lido staked SOL stuck
A faulty smart contract has unintentionally locked $24 million in staked Solana (stSOL) on the liquid-staking platform Lido
Lido on Solana let users stake Solana
SOL $189 for a 5% annual yield, but it was sunset in October due to unsustainable financials and low fees. Users had until February to unstake through a user-friendly front end — but that’s gone, too, leaving them only the option of manually unstaking via Solana’s command line interface (CLI).
Lido Discord members have posted that the CLI is too complicated to use, leaving 31,588 stSOL holders with a combined $24 million worth of the token stuck.
User error might not be the issue after all, as Pavel Pavlov, a product manager at P2P Validator — the team once behind Lido on Solana — revealed in a March 30 Discord message that there was an issue with the smart contract behind the withdrawal function.
Pavlov said the Lido DAO has to change the smart contract which “is quite significant in terms of complexity and time,” so it’s exploring workarounds that don’t require smart contract changes.
DOJ’s seized Bitcoin moves to new wallet
Around $2 billion worth of Bitcoin seized by the Department of Justice in relation to the Silk Road marketplace has moved to a new address.
Blockchain data from April 2 shows a wallet associated with the DOJ made a 0.001 Bitcoin
BTC $65,896 transaction to a Coinbase Prime address, presumably as a test before transferring the rest of the funds. Shortly after that, the same wallet transferred 30,174 BTC.
On-chain analysts have connected those funds to James Zhong, who was convicted of charges connected to “unlawfully obtained” Bitcoin from the Silk Road marketplace. U.S. authorities raided his property and confiscated the stolen Bitcoin in 2021.
Less than two years later, in March 2023, government authorities confirmed they had sold roughly 9,861 BTC seized from Zhong.
The Silk Road marketplace was shut down more than a decade ago. Its creator, Ross Ulbricht, is currently serving two life sentences without the possibility of parole.
