Scams

Cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock identified an infected device linked to suspected North Korean state-sponsored hackers in the $1.4 billion Bybit cryptocurrency theft in February 2025. The device was central to establishing infrastructure that supported the theft, with domains registered before the attack and used in phishing operations. The incident underscores sophisticated cyber threats targeting digital financial platforms and raises concerns about vulnerabilities in centralized exchanges.

On-chain investigator ZachXBT reported on December 5 that a British individual allegedly connected to the $243M Genesis creditor Bitcoin theft may have been apprehended in Dubai. Approximately $18.58M in cryptocurrency has reportedly been seized and held in a single Ethereum wallet. Dubai authorities have not issued official confirmation of any arrest or seizure.

Federal prosecutors have requested a 12-year prison term for Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon in connection with the 2022 collapse of Terra USD and Luna tokens that wiped out $40 billion in value. The sentencing recommendation was filed Thursday with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Prosecutors cited the unprecedented scale of the fraud and Kwon's conduct in artificially inflating asset values while enriching himself.

The PEPE memecoin's official website has been compromised, redirecting visitors to phishing pages designed to steal wallet credentials. Cybersecurity firm Blockaid detected malicious code linked to the Inferno Drainer toolkit embedded in the site's front end. Meanwhile, the PEPE/DOGE trading pair is on track to close its second consecutive weekly gain, marking the first back-to-back weekly advance since June.

A British individual allegedly connected to the theft of $243 million from a Genesis creditor may have been detained in Dubai, blockchain investigator ZachXBT stated on December 5. Approximately $18.58 million in cryptocurrency was reportedly seized from addresses linked to the suspect. UAE authorities have not publicly confirmed any arrests or asset seizures related to the case.

SpaceX moved 1,083 BTC worth approximately $99.81 million to Coinbase Prime Custody addresses, data show. The USPD stablecoin suffered a $1 million exploit through a CPIMP attack that compromised proxy-layer logic during deployment on September 16, 2025. A Cloudflare outage disrupted access to major exchanges including Coinbase, Kraken, and Upbit.

The official Pepe memecoin website has been infiltrated through a front-end exploit involving Inferno Drainer malware. Cybersecurity firm Blockaid issued an alert on December 4, 2025, warning users that malicious code was injected into the site. The attack aims to redirect visitors to phishing pages designed to steal wallet credentials and drain digital assets.

Washington state's Department of Financial Institutions issued a Temporary Cease and Desist Order against Bitcoin ATM operator Coinme on December 1, 2025. The Seattle-based company must halt money transmission services and return over $8 million to customers. The regulator alleges the firm illegally converted unredeemed customer funds into corporate revenue, violating the state's Uniform Money Services Act.

Security researchers captured North Korean operatives in real time after deploying a honeypot workstation that mimicked a developer environment. The operatives, linked to the Lazarus Group's Famous Chollima division, used legitimate AI hiring tools and cloud services to establish trusted insider access rather than exploit code vulnerabilities. The operation revealed systematic use of job-automation software, VPN masking, and persistent remote-access protocols to bypass corporate security measures.

Anthropic's Frontier Red Team demonstrated that AI agents autonomously reconstructed 19 real smart contract exploits from 34 incidents occurring after March 2025, extracting $4.6 million in simulated value. GPT-5 scanned 2,849 BNB Chain contracts at $1.22 per target, uncovering two zero-day vulnerabilities worth approximately $3,694 in simulated profit, according to research published December 1.