NEAR Intents Hacked: $3.8M Stolen After Intercepting $50M in Hacker Funds

NEAR Intents, a cross-chain swap protocol built on NEAR Protocol, has been hacked. The attack led to the theft of $3.8 million from its BSC hot wallet, with funds transferred to KuCoin and then bridged to the Bitcoin network.

The incident comes just under a week after NEAR Intents played a defensive role in intercepting over $50 million in hacker funds linked to the Bitget breach, which saw attackers exploit a zero-day vulnerability in a third-party security product. At the time, NEAR Intents' General Manager Alex Shevchenko publicly stated that they would waive the total 10% bounty offered by Bitget to ensure more funds could return to the exchange.

The attack on NEAR Intents appears to have exploited a flaw in the interaction between its Omni deposit/withdrawal infrastructure and smart contracts. The team has committed to full reimbursement for affected assets, reported the case to authorities, and is conducting on-chain tracking.

NEAR Intents' security incident occurred amidst lingering fallout from the Bitget case, with addresses linked to the attackers still converting DAI stablecoins and bridging them to the Tron network. The debate over whether decentralized protocols should freeze suspicious funds remains unresolved.