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#Venus #PhishingAttack #Crypto In September 2025, the Venus Protocol phishing incident ignited an industry-wide debate: a wallet worth 13 million USD was drained, the protocol team urgently halted all functionality, and within 12 hours pulled off an unprecedented “rescue operation.” This wasn’t just another phishing attack — it exposed a deeper contradiction: can a decentralized protocol have it both ways? Can it uphold “code is law,” yet still “extend a helping hand” in a crisis? This article reconstructs the drama end to end — from the attack vector to the protocol’s response, and the governance questions underneath — to unpack the full story behind the Venus phishing incident. A Full Replay of the Venus Phishing Incident A. An Apparently Ordinary Phish: Six Seconds to Ruin Back to 09:05 UTC on September 2, 2025. A Venus Protocol whale (Sun Kuan, founder of Eureka Crypto) opened the Zoom client, ready for routine DeFi operations. No one expected this meeting to spark a 13 million USD vaporization. The hacker didn’t try to crack a private key or smash a protocol bug. Instead, by tampering with the Zoom client and forging a browser extension, they led the victim to believe they were performing an ordinary approval signature. At the moment of signing, the attacker obtained delegated control over the wallet. From click to liquidation: just six seconds. For DeFi users, this is chilling. Almost everyone has signed similar approvals — often faster than reading the terms of service. Faced with a long-prepared social-engineering trap, every defense can collapse instantly. B. The Attack Flow: A “Flash-Loan Murder Mystery” Once the compromised wallet was under control, the hacker executed a textbook DeFi attack sequence: Flash loan ignition: Borrowed 285.72 BTCB with no collateral, instantly commanding tens of millions in liquidity. Repay & transfer: First repaid the victim’s debts, then, leveraging the granted approvals, transferred out all assets, including vUSDT, vUSDC, and BTCB. Re-collateralization: Used the stolen assets as collateral to borrow 7.14 million USD in USDC from Venus — effectively forcing the victim to pay the hacker’s “ransom.” Flash-loan repayment: Closed the loop by repaying the flash loan with the stolen funds — getting something for nothing while shunting the risk to the victim’s wallet. In under a minute, 13 million USD was siphoned out — like a well-rehearsed script. C. Protocol Response: From the Nuclear Option to a Flash Vote Typically, this is where such attacks end: the victim laments, the hacker vanishes, the community snarks for a few days, and life goes on. Not this time. At 09:09, security firms Hexagate and Hypernative fired the first alerts. Venus quickly confirmed the problem and, within 20 minutes, hit the emergency brake — a full protocol pause: Borrowing halted Liquidations suspended Withdrawals frozen The entire DeFi protocol entered standstill mode. This was unprecedented: to save one user, the entire ecosystem shut down. Next, Venus initiated a so-called flash vote. The proposal was blunt: Partially restore functionality to avoid spillover liquidations Force-liquidate the attacker’s positions and seize collateral Conduct a full security review Ultimately restore the protocol Community voting result? 100% in favor. The number recalls the “perfect elections” of authoritarian states. Consensus — or resignation? No one can say for sure. D. Counterstrike: The Hacker’s “Grave of His Own Making” With the vote passed, Venus moved immediately. Out of greed, the hacker left stolen assets as collateral inside the protocol. Those very collateral positions became his death trap. At 21:36 UTC, Venus executed liquidations, forcibly seizing the attacker’s positions. In under 12 hours, the “perfect playbook” turned into a “suicide script.” Funds were recovered, the protocol restored — but at the cost of shaking trust in decentralization across the industry. E. The Victim and the Hand Behind the Curtain Victim Sun Kuan later acknowledged: this was a long-planned phishing campaign. The attacker impersonated an industry acquaintance and used a tampered Zoom client and Chrome extension to induce an unsuspecting approval. Multiple analyses suggest the Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking outfit, may be behind the attack. They have a long record in crypto, adept at social engineering and patient staging. It means that even seasoned players can be defenseless against a nation-state adversary. Decentralization’s Dilemma: Save People or Obey the Law? 1. Venus’s actions sparked intense controversy. “Code is law” has long been DeFi’s golden rule: once a smart contract is deployed, no one should have the power to change or interfere. It stands for extreme transparency and certainty — rules on-chain, equal for all, no exceptions. But in this case, Venus intervened — triggering the emergency pause and even force-liquidating the hacker’s positions via governance. While this effectively clawed back losses, it forces a rethink: how “decentralized” is a decentralized protocol? From a user’s standpoint, the intervention is almost beyond reproach. Leaving a 13 million USD loss unaddressed isn’t just a personal nightmare — it can spark panic selling. Venus’s “emergency brake” was like pulling the fire alarm in a burning building, preventing spread. For most users, fund safety trumps the abstract principle of decentralization. From decentralization’s standpoint, though, this breaks the myth. An emergency switch admits there are visible hands behind the protocol — capable of freezing markets, changing rules, and deciding outcomes. How different is that from TradFi’s “lender of last resort”? In a sense, Venus became a quasi-bank beneath a decentralized veneer. 2. More troubling: who decides when to invoke emergency powers? If it’s for hackers, everyone applauds; but if, in future, it targets an “non-compliant wallet” or a “politically sensitive transaction,” could the same rationale apply? Once the precedent is set, decentralization’s boundary blurs. This is a paradox the entire DeFi space can’t avoid: Ideal: all power to code — even if user error destroys funds, no human intervention. Reality: users want a safety net — someone to help when the unexpected hits. This debate isn’t new. In 2020’s MakerDAO black swan, to stabilize DAI the community had to rush in auction mechanics; In 2022’s Solana outages, validators coordinated restarts to keep the system alive; In 2016’s The DAO hack, Ethereum hard-forked to roll back transactions and save the ecosystem. These cases show that when interest collides with ideology, the blockchain world often oscillates between purity and pragmatism. So when someone asks, “If DeFi still relies on human intervention, how is it different from a bank?” — the answer may not be binary. The difference may be: TradFi rules are typically set by a few institutions; users passively accept. DeFi interventions at least require open, on-chain governance votes — decisions are transparent and auditable. This is the subtle, fragile boundary between DeFi and TradFi: DeFi seeks to retain a decentralization ethos, yet admits that in extremes, a human hand may be needed. Venus simply surfaced the problem early. Conclusion From the 09:05 click to the 21:58 restoration, the Venus phishing incident looks like a “successful rescue,” but it leaves bigger questions: Can a decentralized protocol be truly decentralized? Are emergency powers a safety net or a centralization shackle? Faced with real-world risk, must ideals ultimately compromise? Perhaps that’s the most memorable part of this episode: hackers can steal assets, but what may truly be stolen is people’s faith in decentralization.

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