Near Intents got hacked and lost $3.8M in crypto assets. The news was first reported by ZachXBT in his Telegram Investigation Group who identified abnormal cashouts and later confirmed by Near Intents. According to the protocol account on X, the hackers exploited a bug in the smart contract and managed to successful get access on those funds.
The incident was then shared across the X crypto space by major outlets like CoinBureau and commented by specialists like XBToshi who analyzed the case that is peculiar. Near Intents a few days back managed to flag 50 million dollars and froze $503K in mid-execution from Bitget stolen funds and increased the bounty on their platform to help recover more of those funds.
That move from Near Intents was a reason for people to support them and Gracy Chen, the Burger CEO, congratulate them public. But that is also problematic: if the protocol can freeze random funds at their discretion they also can one day stop a legitimate swap and ask them for KYC. The move they did is nothing permissionless and prove that there's an admin key to lock anyone funds any moment and that isn't something they disclosed when marketing their protocol.
Anyway the news from today is that they were victims too and the cyber criminals stole from them. Today their manager came out to tell the community that they identified the responsible for the hack and **are giving them 48 hours to return the funds.
Seriously I don't know if the manager is some kind of wizard to threaten the hackers and actually do something to recover the funds in 48 hours. **If they successful identified and knows who they are why the theatrical move? This sounds to me like a desperate move. But who knows maybe he has some kind of magical move on his sleeves to get back the funds.
September 2026 was a month that hackers stole a lot of crypto assets and many are pointing to North Korea groups with Lazarus at the forefront. This isn't new but the audacity and regular stealing is what put all the ecosystem worried as the criminals aren't stopping. They are more sophisticated in their attacks and at minimal breach funds are gone.
Isn't that ironic? You flag $50M and manage to freeze more than $500K to get criminals to steal from you $3.8M in crypto funds!! This hackers are something else.
Stay tuned for more updates and news