Cybersecurity firm Hacken has blamed a private key leak that allowed a bad actor to mint and loot $250,000 worth of the ecosystems 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.Source: HackenHacken team members said theyve since revoked the compromised minter account from the token contract and regained control; however, based on Hackens 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 deploymentHacken said the private key was compromised during architectural changes to the firms blockchain bridge, which were being applied specifically to prevent risks like this, according to Hacken.Hackens 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 supportedHacken 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.Source: Dyma BudorinOur 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 Hackens equity shareholders.Related: Politicians memecoins, dropped court cases fuel crypto crime supercycleAll 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 yearBlockchain 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 protocols token mpETH worth nearly $27 million but only managed to steal around 52.5 Ether (ETH), worth just over $132,000.Magazine: Arthur Hayes doesnt care when his Bitcoin predictions are totally wrong