Cosmos Hub Halted After Governance Attack on Neutron

Cosmos Hub validators halted block production for over 24 hours after a governance attack on Neutron, a Cosmos-ecosystem chain. The attacker exploited a malicious 'AI Agent Takeover' proposal to drain contracts of assets worth $4.9 million and $4.4 million from Astroport and Drop, respectively.

The attacker reportedly spent just $20,199 to acquire the NTRN tokens needed to pass the vote on Neutron, which entered its long-term maintenance phase earlier this year. The attack led to losses of $9.5 million, with the remainder stuck on halted networks.

Cosmos Hub validators decided to halt block production, securing a further 1.2 million $ATOM (over $2.2 million) held in the attacker's address. The scheduled restart is set to include a queued refund of the trapped $ATOM balance.