Risky Crypto Addresses Tied to $574 Million in Losses

A recent study published at USENIX Security '26 identified 65,340 risky cryptocurrency addresses involved in misuse across Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain. The researchers found that these addresses were tied to losses of over $574 million.

The study separated the problem into contract-account misuse and externally owned account misuse. Contract-account misuse occurs when someone sends a function call to an address with no contract code, allowing funds to sit at that address unless later-deployed code can move them.

Externally owned account misuse starts with a public or exposed private key, enabling anyone who has the key to control the account. The researchers found that more than 17,200 delegated addresses were affected by this issue.