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Hackers drain $320M in Bitcoin from Liquid Network, claim they're the good guys

Attackers withdrew about 4,000 BTC (~$320M) from Liquid Network's federation wallet via a SideSwap peg-out, claiming whitehat status.

Hackers drained roughly $320 million in Bitcoin — about 4,000 BTC, 95% of holdings — from the federation wallet backing Blockstream's Liquid Network sidechain. The withdrawal occurred through SideSwap using its Peg-out Authorization Key (PAK), yet no PAK appears to have been compromised, and the exact mechanism remains under investigation. The actors embedded an on-chain message identifying themselves as whitehats, asked Blockstream to patch federation nodes first, and promised to return most of the funds after fixes are confirmed. Liquid disabled its bridge nodes and asked exchanges to suspend L-BTC deposits and withdrawals; other Liquid assets and the Bitcoin network were unaffected.

The Register · Security · 8d agoExploit / PoC in the wild

Hackers Drain $320 Million From Liquid Network, Then Return Most of It

Hackers exploited an Elements bug to drain about 4,000 BTC (~$320M) from Liquid Network's federation wallet, then returned 3,400 BTC after Blockstream patched.

An attacker drained roughly 4,000 of 4,200 BTC (~$320M) from Bitcoin's Liquid Network federation wallet on September 6 by exploiting a bug in Elements, the open-source code powering the sidechain, which allowed unbacked L-BTC tokens that were redeemed for real Bitcoin through SideSwap's authorized peg-out mechanism. The self-described white-hat attackers negotiated publicly via OP_RETURN on-chain messages, demanding the bridge nodes be patched before returning 3,400 BTC (~$262.6M) and keeping about 598 BTC (~$47M). Blockstream confirmed the affected bridge nodes were patched; the network remains paused while federation members complete security work, and experts debate whether the act legally constitutes extortion.

Security Affairs · 7d agoExploit / PoC in the wild

Liquid Hackers Return 3,400 Bitcoin Taken via Elements Bug, Still Holding $47M in BTC

Hackers exploited an Elements bug to take ~4,000 BTC from Liquid Network, returned 3,400 BTC (~$265M), and still hold ~598.5 BTC (~$47M).

Attackers exploited a bug in Elements, the software behind Blockstream's Liquid Network Bitcoin sidechain, to create L-BTC and withdraw roughly 4,000 BTC (about $320 million) via SideSwap's Peg-out Authorization Key, roughly 95% of Liquid's reported reserves. They returned 3,400 BTC (about $265 million at ~$78,000 per BTC) to the federation address on September 7, keeping about 598.5 BTC (roughly $47 million). The group called itself white hats, demanded node patches before returning funds, and negotiated via on-chain and PGP-encrypted messages; Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet characterized the arrangement as extortion. Blockstream says the peg-out key and other keys were not compromised, updated software is deployed, and the network remains paused pending a coordinated restart.

The Hacker News · 7d agoExploit / PoC in the wild

Week in review: Linux rootkit deployed on F5 BIG-IP APM devices, Cisco FMC bugs exploited

Weekly roundup: Cisco FMC and N-able N-central zero-days exploited in the wild, MikroTik RouterOS hijacks, Microsoft Patch Tuesday ships two exploited zero-days.

State-sponsored and financially-motivated attackers are actively exploiting CVE-2026-20079, a critical authentication bypass in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC), alongside CVE-2026-20316. N-able issued an emergency hotfix for CVE-2026-86218, a critical pre-auth RCE in the N-central RMM platform exploited in the wild. CERT Polska disclosed six RouterOS vulnerabilities being chained to hijack internet-exposed MikroTik devices. Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday shipped a record patch count including two zero-days, while roughly 67,000 Trezor customers faced phishing after a shipping-partner breach and researchers privately disclosed a zero-click WeChat worm to Tencent.

Help Net Security · 3d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-20079CVE-2026-20316CVE-2026-862182· 1 read

Critical Gitea RCE Actively Exploited as Reported Attack Drops Miner

CISA added actively exploited Gitea RCE CVE-2026-60004 (CVSS 9.8) to the KEV catalog as attackers deploy a cryptojacking dropper.

CVE-2026-60004 is a critical remote code execution flaw affecting Gitea versions 1.17 through 1.27.0, abused via the diffpatch endpoint to install a Git hook and execute shell commands as the Gitea OS user. Default open registration lets unauthenticated attackers obtain the required repository write access. CISA added the flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, giving federal agencies until August 28, 2026 to patch; version 1.27.1 fixes it. A developer reported their HOSTKEY-hosted VPS was exploited to run a miner-like dropper, driving CPU usage above 70% and killing competing processes.

The Hacker News · 21d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-60004