Chainflip Loses $736K in Tron USDT Exploit, Pauses Until Monday

According to BlockchainReporter, cross-chain swap protocol Chainflip disclosed that an attacker drained 736,442.17 USDT from its Tron integration on September 12. The exploit marked the first significant security incident resulting in a loss of funds from Chainflip vaults. The attacker attached unauthorized memos to transactions already signed by Chainflip validators, causing the system to read them as separate swaps, treat them as failed, and issue double refunds across eight runs over ninety minutes.

Chainflip paused operations and expects to remain offline until at least Monday while implementing a technical restart plan. Analysis showed that 736,442.17 USDT was taken across six unauthorized payouts, while one pending user swap of 115,654.41 USDT remains in the vault. All other funds are reported unaffected and secure. Chainflip stated it is confident it can make impacted users whole and has flagged the exploited funds with relevant parties. Additionally, Chainflip plans to enhance internal efforts to use AI tools to find vulnerabilities following the incident.