[HN Gopher] Binance's Trust Wallet extension hacked; users lose $7M
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       Binance's Trust Wallet extension hacked; users lose $7M
        
       Author : ilamont
       Score  : 71 points
       Date   : 2025-12-29 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.web3isgoinggreat.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.web3isgoinggreat.com)
        
       | addams wrote:
       | One of CZ's tweets hints at an insider threat, but Trust Wallet
       | was one of the GitHub organizations pwned by Sha1 Hulud. What are
       | the odds this is a fallout of that?
        
       | gigatexal wrote:
       | I can't have any more schadenfreude than I have now
        
       | 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
       | That is a great domain name.
        
       | wyldfire wrote:
       | I love the concept of cryptocoins. But in practice, there are
       | some enormous hazards that make it not worthwhile IMO. This is
       | just one such hazard, but by now we've seen several flavors of
       | "this custody/storage mechanism failed to securely store some
       | wealth." If securing it yourself, it's so easy to mishandle and
       | either destroy your wealth or have it stolen. If delegating it to
       | an "expert" you risk the custodial agent falling victim to
       | theft/exit scam/ineptitude. Does any third party insure these
       | agents?
       | 
       | Having a government-insured bank deposit means that I've never
       | had to think about this in my lifetime. It's a problem that I
       | don't need.
        
         | sunshine-o wrote:
         | > Having a government-insured bank deposit means that I've
         | never had to think about this in my lifetime. It's a problem
         | that I don't need.
         | 
         | Government-insured bank deposits are mostly BS, the fine prints
         | say they have about 10 years to reimburse you and in case of a
         | systemic failure good luck.
         | 
         | In case the bank app, their "system" or your computer is
         | compromised most banks will not reimburse you. It is very easy
         | for them to say you were ultimately responsible for the hack.
         | Very few banks have the policy of taking the loss and it is
         | hard to know which one still do that unless you know someone in
         | their fraud department.
        
       | sunshine-o wrote:
       | I believe the Achilles' heel of Web3 is really that is was built
       | on Web1&2.
       | 
       | Whatever opinion you might have about this industry, the core
       | work is done by the Bitcoin and Ethereum teams and it is pretty
       | admirable. They have been progressing for 10 years in a system
       | where any mistake can collapse the entire system.
       | 
       | But ultimately those wallets and Web3 apps are built with web
       | technologies and run in a browser and this is just not made for
       | this.
       | 
       | This hack was targeting seed phases or private key because the
       | keys have to be stored in the browser extension. How insane is
       | that? But there isn't really any other ways to do it within the
       | framework of a web browser.
       | 
       | Ultimately if the extension or web app is compromised an hardware
       | wallet cannot really ultimately protect you (at least you would
       | only be compromised when interacting with it).
       | 
       | Ethereum also now built in the secp256r1 signature checker so
       | passkey/yubikey can be used but, same problem the "web" is the
       | weak link.
       | 
       | Bottom line if they want that thing to succeed they will have to
       | create a way to interact with smart contracts outside of the web
       | browser. Maybe it will take building a simpler "dapp browser".
       | Their apps are pretty basic in the end, a TUI would be enough to
       | swap a token and approve a transaction...
        
       | Uptrenda wrote:
       | But it has trust in the name. How can it be hacked?
        
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       (page generated 2025-12-29 23:00 UTC)