Whitehat hacker rescues $1.5M from first DeFi hack of 2025

The Moby team’s statement describes the hack as “an incident involving the leakage of a private key, which affected some LP [liquidity provider] assets,” pointing out that “it was not a security issue related to the protocol’s smart contracts” before pledging to cover any losses to traders and LPs.

According to blockchain security audit firm Beosin, the hacker used the stolen private key to modify a proxy contract. This allowed them to use an “emergency” withdrawal function and drain 207 WETH and 3.7 WBTC, worth approximately $687,000 and $350,000 at the time.

The tokens were swapped to ETH and bridged back to the attacker’s Ethereum address before being dispersed to other addresses.

Luckily, an oversight on the part of the attacker was picked up via Ke’s MEV bot, which scans transactions for profitable opportunities.

Ironically, after compromising Moby’s private key, the upgrade function of the attacker’s replacement contract was left unprotected. This allowed Ke’s bot to pull a switcheroo, replicating the same attack on the hacker’s own contract, and scooping up the $1.5 million in USDC.

The rescue of the remaining WETH and WBTC was missed by just 30 seconds, according to Ke.

Off to a good start?

A yearly roundup of 2024’s crypto hacks by security firm Peckshield estimates the total lost at $3 billion, up around 15% from the year before. The total includes a significant portion of losses chalked up to crypto-related scams, and tallies almost $500 million of recovered funds.