Monday, December 22, 2025

These failures weren’t attacks - they were inheritances. Protocols that neglect their past eventually hand over their vaults to the first person willing to read the fine print they forgot.

What is a CPIMP Attach in DeFi Smart Contracts? (7 min read)
DeFi obsesses over smart-contract bugs while attackers slip in through the front door at deployment. CPIMP attacks weaponize upgradeable proxies themselves - front-running uninitialized deployments to install a shadow proxy that forwards every call, spoofs every storage read, and holds admin rights for months without a single failed transaction. Nothing breaks, nothing looks suspicious, and audits can’t help because the code is fine - it’s the deployment that’s compromised.

MDR: Pause a Protocol in One Minute (7 min read)
Most protocols don’t fail because they miss the exploit - they fail because they miss the minute that mattered. Flashing alerts turn into stalled Slack threads, multisig signers are asleep, no one knows who can authorize a pause, and by the time a war room forms, the attacker is already laundering the TVL. MDR closes that operational gap: preapproved pause criteria, pre-signed transactions, 24/7 human triage, and instant war rooms that trigger the moment an invariant breaks.

The Deepfake Reckoning: Why Crypto’s Next Security Battle Will Be Against Synthetic Humans (9 min read)
Deepfakes have made identity fraud instant, cheap, and frighteningly convincing - letting scammers bypass KYC, fake influencer streams, and even generate full synthetic personas that slide through legacy verification. As crypto adoption surges, defenses built for passwords and face checks are collapsing under industrial-scale fake identities.

What is a Flashloan Attack? Overview by Sherlock (10 min read)
Flash loans don’t break protocols - protocols break themselves when they trust a single-transaction snapshot as economic truth. By borrowing massive capital for milliseconds, attackers distort prices, reserves, and accounting inputs, then trigger mint, borrow, or liquidation logic before reality snaps back. The loan is repaid, the chain rolls forward, and the protocol commits damages based on a state that never truly existed.

The Worst OpSec Fails of 2025: Lessons from Darknet Busts and Whale Kidnappings (9 min read)
2025 showed that most security failures weren’t exploits - they were people slipping up. Global darknet takedowns unraveled entire markets thanks to reused passwords, leaked IPs, and careless metadata that exposed operators behind supposedly anonymous networks. At the same time, physical attacks on crypto whales surged, with kidnappers using victims’ online footprints to force multimillion-dollar wallet transfers at gunpoint. And pig-butchering scams scaled into industrial fraud rings tied to billions in stolen crypto, collapsing under their own digital traces.

SantaStealer Rebrands as New Crypto-Focused Info-Stealer. A revived BluelineStealer variant is being marketed as “memory-only” malware, but early samples show weak OpSec while still targeting browser data, Telegram/Discord accounts, and multiple crypto wallets.

Solana Eats a 6-Tbps DDoS Without Blinking. The network absorbed one of the largest DDoS attacks in internet history with zero downtime or fee impact, signaling that Solana’s old outage reputation has been replaced by industrial-grade, battle-tested resilience.

React Vulnerability Used to Plant Crypto Drainers. Attackers are exploiting CVE-2025-55182 in React Server Components to inject hidden wallet-drainer scripts into legitimate crypto sites, prompting SEAL to warn all teams to audit front-end code and upgrade immediately to the patched React release.

North Korean ‘Fake Zoom’ Hacks Now a Daily Threat. SEAL reports DPRK operators are running daily campaigns using fake Zoom calls to drop malware that drains wallets, steals passwords, and hijacks Telegram accounts.

Holiday Crypto Scams Surge as Fraudsters Exploit Festive Distraction. Phishing lures, fake wallet apps, bogus token presales, impersonation attacks, and romance scams all spike during the holidays, preying on rushed, emotional, and unsuspecting users - turning year-end cheer into a prime hunting season for crypto thieves.

The Official Cybersecurity Summit
January 28 - February 3, 2026 | Tampa, Seattle/Bellevue,
A series of regional cybersecurity summits featuring government briefings, ransomware defence talks, and threat-focused sessions to help organizations understand and counter modern cyber threats.

Cyber Leaders’ Summit
January 28, 2026 | London, UK
A gathering of cybersecurity leaders and decision-makers, delivering strategic talks, peer exchange, and high-level discussions on threat trends, governance, and defensive operations across enterprise and public sectors.

European Cybersecurity Skills Conference 2026
March 4 - 5, 2026 | Larnaca, Cyprus
An ENISA-organized event spotlighting cyber skills development and the European Cybersecurity Skills Framework, bringing together public sector, industry, and academia to build workforce capabilities.

RSAC Conference 2026
March 23 - 26, 2026 | San Francisco, USA
One of the world’s largest IT security gatherings, featuring expert keynotes, panels, and expos covering threat intelligence, enterprise security, governance, and cutting-edge defensive technologies.

IAAP Global Privacy Summit 2026
March 30, 2026 | Washington, DC, USA
A major privacy and data protection event focusing on governance, compliance, and cybersecurity’s intersection with privacy law and organizational risk.

One year ago, Hyperliquid found itself on the wrong side of a DPRK wish list when Tayvano traced state-linked wallets poking at a $2B bridge secured by just four validators. The déjà vu was brutal: Ronin lost $624M when five of nine keys fell, and Hyperliquid’s 3-of-4 setup looked like the sequel nobody wanted. Panic hit first - HYPE nuked 21% and $210M fled the protocol - then denial, as the team waved off warnings while North Korean operators kept circling the edges.

Operation Aurora was the day Google learned nation-states don’t send bug reports - they steal the whole repo. A state-sponsored smash-and-grab that rewrote the rules of cyber warfare overnight.

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We are all rekt.