How 1,404 Qubic Wallets Were Drained Without Breaking Crypto

What Happened to Qubic?

Imagine locking your house with a key that is way too easy to guess. That is essentially what happened to 1,404 Qubic crypto wallets recently.

Over a single 24-hour period, the price of Qubic (QUBIC) fell 5.2% down to $0.0000004394. During that same window, the broader crypto market dropped 2.8%. Qubic fell almost twice as hard because of a security disclosure on October 18.

Crypto prices can be volatile, especially during security alerts, so it is always smart to keep market risks in mind. Past returns or past performance of digital assets do not guarantee future returns or performance. You can check market data anytime at bitkub.com/th/market/QUBIC.

How Weak Wallet Seeds Led to a $1.29 Million Drain

Qubic is an AI-focused mining protocol that made headlines last year during a Monero majority claim debate. The project team reported that the incident was incredibly fast, taking under two hours.

The drain started at 23:42 UTC on October 17 and wrapped up at 01:26 UTC on October 18. By the end, the attacker had snatched about 2.94 trillion QU, which was worth roughly $1.29 million.

How did they do it? Qubic traced the root cause back to how wallet seed phrases were created. The system generated seeds with insufficient randomness. In simple terms, the generator created secret keys that were far too predictable for a smart hacker.

Importantly, the team clarified that the core Qubic blockchain protocol was never broken or hacked. The flaw was strictly inside the seed generator tool.

Which Wallets Were Affected by the Flaw?

Qubic published specific criteria to help users figure out if their account was at risk. The weakness impacted several setup methods:

• Seeds created in any web browser on an iPhone or iPad prior to October 18, 2026.
• Seeds created using the Safari browser on a Mac prior to October 18, 2026.
• Seeds created inside the official Qubic iOS app before July 2025.

To fix this issue immediately, Qubic released software version 4.26.4. This update prevents any new weak seeds from being generated.

How Network Validators Froze the Stolen Funds

When the exploit occurred, Qubic's network validators (known as Computors) stepped in quickly. They coordinated a full network pause at tick 85,371,949.

By pausing the network, all transactions came to a sudden stop. This move trapped most of the stolen funds right where they were.

Here is where the stolen tokens ended up:

• 87.1% of the stolen funds remained locked directly on the Qubic network.
• 12.9% of the funds were sent to the MEXC centralized exchange.

Fortunately, MEXC acted fast and froze the receiving account in about an hour. Third-party exchanges have also temporarily paused QUBIC deposits and withdrawals while the community figures out what to do next.

"Any resolution is a decision for the Computor quorum, under the rules of the network," the Qubic team explained.

Currently, Qubic's Core team is mapping out all affected user identities and drafting official proposals for the quorum to vote on.

Another Incident: The Cysic Bridge Hack

Unfortunately, Qubic was not the only project targeted. On October 17, the very same day the Qubic drain started, Cysic's cross-chain bridge suffered a separate attack.

The Cysic Foundation reported that an attacker managed to illegally mint 10 million Cysic (CYS) tokens on the BNBBNB+0.18% Smart Chain.

Early investigations revealed that the hacker breached a backend database supporting the bridge. They then took advantage of flawed processing logic to send a fake minting message to the blockchain.

Cysic reacted quickly. Within 76 minutes, the team blacklisted the hacker's address, locking up roughly 2.8 million CYS tokens still sitting in the wallet.

The Cysic bridge remains closed for safety. Cysic confirmed that no original user funds were stolen, and they are still calculating the exact financial loss since the minted amount does not directly equal dollar damage.

A Challenging Month for Crypto Security

These two incidents add to a growing list of security breaches. According to analytics firm DefiLlama, October has already seen 11 separate exploits.

Altogether, these hacks account for roughly $6.2 million in disclosed losses. The largest incident so far was a $3.8 million bridge logic flaw on NEAR Intents back on October 1.

These events serve as a helpful reminder to always keep software updated and follow best security practices when managing crypto wallets.