Circle and Tether Freeze Stolen Funds

Following Multichain’s protocol bridge exploit, bad actors are trying to scam victims using phishing links that offer emergency airdrops.

The malicious actors specifically target victims of the Multichain hack, enticing them with promises of airdropping new tokens.

Phishing Links Targeting Multichain and Fantom Users Emerge on Twitter

Scammers, operating an account resembling Fantom Foundation’s official account, tweeted a phishing link that received over 5000 retweets and accumulated over 50,000 views.

Meanwhile, several on-chain sleuths have cautioned their community about these phishing links. However, whether the fraudulent airdrop announcement has affected or misled any users is unclear.

Circle and Tether Blacklist Over $67M of Stolen Funds

Stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle have blacklisted five addresses that received part of the $126 million stolen funds. These firms froze $67.5 million worth of USDC and USDT, representing about 50% of the stolen funds from the cross-chain protocol.

Blockchain security firm Peckshield reported that Circle blacklisted three addresses receiving outflow funds from Multichain. The three addresses, 0x027F1, 0xefEeF, and 0x48BeA, held $65 million in USDC.

Fantom Foundation also disclosed that Tether blacklisted 0x37254 and 0x9abf66. The two addresses hold about $2.5 million in USDT.

Meanwhile, Popsicle Finance founder Daniel Sestagalli announced that the project will burn the $1.8 million in ICE tokens stolen by the Multichain exploiter. The Popsicle founder added that the project would airdrop WAGMI tokens to impacted Fantom Multichain users.

Crypto Exploits Continue into July

The Multichain hack of July 7 was one of the biggest the industry has seen this year. Although Multichain has yet to provide information on how it was exploited, security experts have linked the incident to a private key compromise.

Although numerous questions remain unanswered regarding the hack, it is yet another incident among the countless crypto exploits that have taken place this year alone.

According to CertiK, $313.5 million were stolen from Web3 projects in the second quarter of this year, while $330 million was stolen in the first quarter. Data from DeFillama further shows that DeFi projects have lost $527.21 million this year.