Cryptoupdated 1h ago2 min read
Qubic Halts Network After Attacker Drains 1,400 Weak-Seed Wallets
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Attack drained about 1,404 wallets, totaling roughly $1.3–$1.4 million. Exploitation stemmed from weak wallet seeds due to insecure randomness.
5 outlets told this the same way.
Qubic halts after drain
Qubic halted operations at tick 85,371,949 after an attacker reportedly exploited weakly generated wallet seeds to drain approximately $1.4 million from more than 1,400 accounts.
Qubic said the vulnerability affected wallet seeds generated using any browser on an iPhone or iPad, Safari on a Mac until Oct. 18, 2026, or the Qubic iOS app before July 2025, leading to 2.94 trillion Qubit (QU) stolen.
Qubic reported that "87.1% of the drained funds never left the Qubic network and remain frozen in place," while the remaining 12.9% was sent to MEXC, whose team froze the receiving account within about an hour.
FinanceFeeds put the theft at 1,404 addresses and said the unauthorized transfers occurred between 23:42 UTC on October 17 and 01:26 UTC on October 18, lasting one hour and 44 minutes.
Seeds, patch, and governance
Qubic attributed the incident to insufficient randomness during wallet seed generation rather than a vulnerability in the blockchain’s underlying transaction-validation protocol. Qubic said it fixed the seed-generation flaw in the latest version of its web wallet, and a GitHub commit for version 4.26.4 showed Qubic replaced JavaScript’s Math.random() function with the cryptographically secure crypto.getRandomValues() function when creating wallet seeds.
Qubic said its core team was identifying affected wallets and preparing recovery options for a vote by the network’s Computors, which will decide what happens to the frozen funds. Qubic also warned that updating the software does not automatically secure wallets whose original recovery seeds were generated using the vulnerable mechanism, leaving recovery and potential return to affected users unresolved.
Where funds sit, what next
Qubic said 87.1% of the stolen tokens remained immobilized on its blockchain following an emergency network halt, while 12.9% reached cryptocurrency exchange MEXC and the exchange froze the receiving account. Qubic said the network validators, known as Computors, coordinated an emergency suspension at tick 85,371,949 to prevent further movement of stolen assets, but the suspension also prevented legitimate users from conducting ordinary transactions.
“The remaining 12.9% was sent to MEXC, whose team froze the receiving account within about an hour.”
Cryptonews.net said Qubic attributed the theft to wallet seeds generated with "insufficient randomness," which let the attacker access affected wallets. Cryptonews.net reported that Qubic advised filing a report with police or cybercrime authorities, including the wallet ID, amount lost and transaction link from its explorer, and Qubic said its team would never initiate a private message, ask for a seed or offer paid recovery services.