Crypto exploits plunge over 90% in February; losses $35.7M

Cryptocurrency exploits plunged by more than 90% in February, with total losses of $35.7 million. It was the sector's quietest month for security incidents since March 2025. Targeted attacks still drained millions. The largest incident, on February 22 on the Stellar network, saw a hacker exploit the community-managed YieldBlox Blend pool and steal more than $10 million via a thin-liquidity oracle manipulation.

By executing a single abnormal trade in the illiquid USTRY/USDC market, the attacker inflated the token’s price by about 100× and triggered massive undercollateralized borrowing. On February 21, IoTeX suffered a breach after a private key was compromised; CertiK estimated nearly $9 million stolen while the IoTeX team put the figure closer to $2 million, with the attacker swapping assets for ETH and routing funds to Bitcoin through cross-chain bridges.

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