An active exploit is draining hundreds of crypto wallets across multiple blockchain networks, with losses reaching approximately $107,000 and climbing, according to blockchain investigator ZachXBT. The attack targets wallets on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible blockchains, extracting small amounts from each victim.
What Happened: Coordinated Wallet Drains
The investigator identified the breach on Jan. 2, reporting that affected wallets have lost under $2,000 each. ZachXBT flagged a suspicious address, 0xAc2e5153170278e24667a580baEa056ad8Bf9bFB, as potentially connected to the ongoing thefts.
"It appears hundreds of wallets are currently being drained on various EVM chains for small amounts (<$2k total per victim) with a root cause not yet unidentified. So far ~$107K has been drained from them with the theft total increasing," ZachXBT posted on Telegram.
The precise cause remains unknown. Users on X reported receiving a phishing email impersonating MetaMask that falsely claimed a mandatory upgrade was required, according to threat researcher Vladimir.
Some analysts have speculated the activity could be linked to Trust Wallet's recent browser extension incident. Last week, a malicious version of Trust Wallet's browser extension (v2.68) appeared on the Chrome Web Store, allowing attackers to access wallet data and execute unauthorized transactions. The team identified 2,520 affected wallet addresses with approximately $8.5 million in assets drained across 17 attacker-controlled addresses.
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Why It Matters: Rising Threat
Data from Chainalysis shows that in 2025, compromises involving individual wallets accounted for roughly 20% of the total value stolen across the crypto ecosystem.
Attackers carried out an estimated 158,000 wallet breaches, impacting at least 80,000 unique victims.
"This suggests that attackers are targeting more users, but stealing smaller amounts per victim," Chainalysis said.
The number of victims has doubled in three years, while total incidents have nearly tripled since 2022, when approximately 54,000 wallet compromises affected around 40,000 users.
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