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Qubic freezes chain after attacker drains 1.4K wallets with weak seeds
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- DeepHorus
Qubic halted its layer-1 blockchain Sunday after an attacker exploited weak wallet seeds to drain about $1.4 million from over 1,400 accounts. The network stopped at tick 85,371,949 and remains paused. Qubic said attackers stole 2.94 trillion Qubit (QU) tokens.
The vulnerability affected seeds generated in any browser on iPhone or iPad, Safari on Mac until Oct. 18, 2026, or the Qubic iOS app before July 2025. Qubic reported 87.1% of drained funds never left the network and remain frozen. The remaining 12.9% was sent to MEXC, which froze the account within about an hour.
Qubic said it has fixed the seed-generation flaw in its latest web wallet. A GitHub commit for version 4.26.4 shows the project replaced JavaScript’s Math.random() with crypto.getRandomValues(), a cryptographically secure function. The core team is now identifying affected wallets and preparing recovery options.
Recovery will be decided by a vote of the network’s Computors, which will determine what happens to the frozen funds. Qubic said it will publish a full technical report after a recovery plan is settled. It has not announced when the network will restart.
The incident is the latest attack tied to weak wallet seeds. In July, Coldcard disclosed that a firmware bug weakened seeds and led to stolen funds. Similar flaws affected Trust Wallet’s browser extension and the Libbitcoin Explorer tool in 2023.
Qubic is a fee-free layer-1 blockchain supporting transactions and smart contracts. It uses Useful Proof of Work, a consensus mechanism that repurposes mining energy to train artificial intelligence. Its token had a market capitalization of about $62.6 million.
The breach adds to a costly quarter for crypto security. AMLBot’s 2026 report found hacks and exploits accounted for 19% of crypto crime cases but 40% of reported losses across 250 investigations. Qubic did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.
