The incident began Oct. 1 when a bug in how NEAR Intents smart contracts interacted with the Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure allowed an exploiter to drain a hot wallet on the BNB Chain. Stolen funds were moved through KuCoin and bridged to Bitcoin, and the $NEAR token price dropped roughly 10% following the news. The company patched the vulnerability within hours and confirmed that the core NEAR Protocol and its native tokens were not compromised.
Wednesday, October 21, 2026
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Hacker Returns Full $3.8M to NEAR Intents After 48 Hour Ultimatum
Crypto19 days ago
The team behind the NEAR Intents bridge has ended its search for a cyberattacker after the missing funds were transferred back to the project. Alex AuroraDev confirmed on Oct. 2 that the $3.8 million stolen during a security breach was returned in full, prompting the company to stop its active investigation. The recovery followed a 48 hour ultimatum issued by general manager Alex Shevchenko after the party responsible for the exploit was identified.
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