Cybersecurity firm Hacken has blamed a private key leak that allowed a bad actor to mint and loot $250,000 worth of the ecosystem’s native Hacken Token (HAI), causing it to plummet around 99% on Saturday.
In an X post, Hacken said the private key was connected to an account with a minting role on the Ethereum and BNB Chain, which led to the “unauthorized HAI minting and a dump” on decentralized exchanges — causing a 99% drop in the value of HAI from $0.015 to $0.000056.
HAI is currently trading at $0.00026.
Hacken team members said they’ve since revoked the compromised minter account from the token contract and regained control; however, based on Hacken’s current estimates, the bad actor still managed to flee with at least $250,000 worth of tokens.
“The core infrastructure has always been separate from HAI infra and remains secure. There is currently no evidence of any compromise beyond the private keys,” Hacken said.
Private key leak linked to bridge deployment
Hacken said the private key was compromised during “architectural changes” to the firm’s blockchain bridge, which were being applied “specifically to prevent risks like this,” according to Hacken.
“Hacken’s bridge was built at a time when the market and tech looked very different. Redesigning a deployed bridge means migrating contracts — a complex legal and technical process,” the firm said.
As a precaution, Hacken has paused bridge transactions on Ethereum and BNB Chain until further notice and warned that there were no airdrops planned and that any posts saying otherwise are scams.
Tokens bought after hack not supported
Hacken CEO Dyma Budorin said in an X post on Sunday that all tokens on the affected networks, BNB Smart Chain and Ethereum, bought after the hack “will not be supported in the new tokenomics.”
“Our goal was always to convert HAI into a security token that represents Hacken equity and has crypto flexibility. Now is the time to accelerate the idea implementation,” he said.
Hacken said its long-term goal now is to transform HAI into a regulated financial tool that merges token utility with equity rights by merging HAI and Hacken’s equity shareholders.
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All legitimate user balances remain trackable, and HAI tokens will have the option to swap later, with details coming soon, according to Hacken.
Hackers stole $1.6 billion in first quarter this year
Blockchain security firm PeckShield said in an April report that hackers stole over $1.63 billion in crypto during the first quarter of 2025.
More recently, liquid staking protocol Meta pool suffered a similar exploit on June 18, when an attacker was able to mint 9,705 of the liquid staking protocol’s token mpETH worth nearly $27 million but only managed to steal around 52.5 Ether (ETH), worth just over $132,000.
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