Researchers flagged high-risk Ethereum and BNB Chain addresses linked to $574.8 million in crypto thefts and abuse.
A study presented at USENIX Security ’26 identified 65,340 high-risk cryptocurrency addresses responsible for over $574.8 million in losses on Ethereum and BNB Chain. The addresses were tied to the theft of 126,982.94 ETH and 17,726.7 BNB, highlighting widespread abuse in the sector.
Researchers pinpointed two attack vectors causing $15.7 million in direct losses. One exploited contract accounts and deterministic addresses, while the other abused EIP-7702 to redirect compromised accounts to malicious code. The study analyzed 16.3 million unique private keys from GitHub repositories, achieving 99.11% detection accuracy.
The findings underscore vulnerabilities in smart contract security and account management, raising concerns about systemic risks in decentralized finance platforms.