AFX Trade Promises to Present "Goodwill Plan" on August 3 Following $24 Million Loss Incident
AFX Trade, a cryptocurrency platform, announced it will present a "goodwill plan" on August 3rd, following a security incident on July 22nd that resulted in a loss of $24.15 million. The company's brief update offered no specific details on compensation for affected users, investors, and employees, only urging calm while the team formulates next steps.
The theft occurred from a USDC custody account on Arbitrum, with the stolen funds converted to Ethereum. Blockchain analysts traced the funds to a single wallet. AFX Trade and Arbitrum clarified the exploit targeted a third-party bridge, not Arbitrum's native bridge.
An investigation revealed the attack began on July 9th with a social engineering scheme targeting a developer. The attacker then deployed malicious code within AFX's internal JFrog repository and infrastructure, eventually compromising bridge validators to authorize the fraudulent withdrawal. The company stated the exploit leveraged a "trust vulnerability," not a smart contract bug.
AFX Trade's head of business development made an offer to the attacker, proposing they keep 30% of the funds as a white hat bounty if 70% is returned.
The incident fits a 2026 trend identified by TRM Labs: while the number of crypto hacks hit a record, total losses decreased. However, infrastructure and operational breaches, though fewer, accounted for the majority of financial losses. The AFX breach is classified as an infrastructure incident involving private key compromise.
cryptonews.ru07/31 12:41
