Scams

Security researchers captured North Korean operatives in real time after deploying a honeypot workstation that mimicked a developer environment. The operatives, linked to the Lazarus Group's Famous Chollima division, used legitimate AI hiring tools and cloud services to establish trusted insider access rather than exploit code vulnerabilities. The operation revealed systematic use of job-automation software, VPN masking, and persistent remote-access protocols to bypass corporate security measures.

Anthropic's Frontier Red Team demonstrated that AI agents autonomously reconstructed 19 real smart contract exploits from 34 incidents occurring after March 2025, extracting $4.6 million in simulated value. GPT-5 scanned 2,849 BNB Chain contracts at $1.22 per target, uncovering two zero-day vulnerabilities worth approximately $3,694 in simulated profit, according to research published December 1.

MetaMask launched Transaction Shield on December 3, 2025, a paid security feature offering up to $10,000 in monthly coverage for losses from approved transactions. The $9.99 monthly subscription targets signature-based scams across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, BNB Chain, and Base.

Huione Pay, a payment subsidiary of Huione Group, suspended all withdrawal operations in Cambodia on December 1, 2025. The halt follows liquidity challenges and intensified regulatory scrutiny from U.S. authorities targeting alleged money laundering activities, according to a FinCEN representative. Tether's USDT trades at $1.00 with a market cap of $184.74 billion.

BubbleMaps issued a warning about the PIPPIN meme coin following its 1,000% price surge over two weeks. The blockchain analytics platform identified insiders controlling approximately 50% of the token supply, valued at $120 million. The token's market capitalization jumped from $20 million to $220 million despite minimal team activity or announcements.

AI research firm Anthropic disclosed that automated AI agents successfully exploited 17 of 34 smart contracts in a simulated blockchain environment, extracting $4.5 million in test funds. The models tested included Claude Opus 4.5 and Claude Sonnet 4.5 against contracts deployed after March 2025. The AI agents also identified two previously unknown vulnerabilities in recently launched contracts.

Anthropic tested AI agents on 405 real-world smart contracts and simulated $550.1 million in stolen cryptocurrency. Newer models exploited 34 contracts deployed after March 2025 for up to $4.6 million, with Opus 4.5 leading at $4.5 million. The agents also discovered two previously unknown zero-day vulnerabilities in live contracts worth $3,694 in test revenue.

Yearn Finance has recovered approximately $2.4 million following a Sunday exploit that drained roughly $9 million from its yETH pools. An attacker exploited an unchecked arithmetic vulnerability to mint an excessive quantity of yETH tokens, enabling liquidity extraction from the protocol's Curve-based stableswap pools. Recovery efforts remain ongoing, with collaboration from security firms SEAL 911 and ChainSecurity.

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee released a 53-page report on December 1, 2025, alleging that Biden Administration regulators attempted to exclude cryptocurrency firms from the banking system. Republicans claim the Federal Reserve, FDIC, OCC, and SEC coordinated policies to discourage banks from serving digital asset companies. The report labels these efforts "Operation Choke Point 2.0" and asserts they occurred while Congress worked to establish regulatory clarity for the sector.

Yearn Finance's yETH pool was drained of approximately $9 million through a minting exploit. The attacker transferred 1,000 ETH to Tornado Cash while retaining around $6 million in a controlling wallet. Data show the breach targeted protective mechanisms in the pool's minting contract.