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Hacken, a cybersecurity company with blockchain expertise, reported that a large hack had occurred due to a private key leak. This key was associated with the company’s token minting system. The key enabled a malicious actor to mint and sell $250,000 of its native Hacken Token (HAI) on Saturday, precipitating a near-complete price collapse for the token.
The company announced the exploit in an X (formerly Twitter) post. Hacken attributed the hack to an exploit of a private key associated with a wallet that had minting capabilities on both Ethereum and BNB Chain. The attacker allegedly minted massive amounts of HAI and dumped it on decentralized exchanges, and the token’s price collapsed by about 99%, from $0.015 to $0.000056. HAI later recovered somewhat and is currently trading at around $0.00026.
Hacken reported that the hacked key was related to architectural updates to its blockchain bridge. These updates were put in place to avoid security breaches such as this one. The company has since pulled the minter rights from the compromised account and promised users that the underlying infrastructure was left unaffected.
“There is as yet no evidence of compromise beyond the private keys,” the company said. It puts the estimate of the attacker’s haul at a minimum of $250,000 worth of HAI.
As a precautionary measure, Hacken has suspended all bridge operations on Ethereum and BNB Chain temporarily. It also warned against phishing airdrop campaigns that are being circulated on social media platforms, establishing that there are no official airdrops in the pipeline at this time.
The firm explained that the private key exposure happened when it redesigned its bridge infrastructure, a legally and technically intricate process of smart contract migration.
“Hacken’s bridge was constructed when the market and tech were very different,” it explained. “Redesigning an on-chain deployed bridge means migrating contracts, a complicated legal and technical procedure.”
Also Read: Ethereum Price Prediction for 2025: Technical Structure, Whale Accumulation, and Market Outlook
In a separate post on Sunday, Hacken CEO Dyma Budorin said HAI tokens purchased on Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain after the exploit will not be supported under the company’s revised tokenomics.
“Our goal was always to convert HAI into a security token that represents Hacken equity and has crypto flexibility,” Budorin wrote. “Now is the time to accelerate the idea implementation.”
The company now intends to move HAI into a regulated investment product that combines token utility with equity stake, essentially bridging token holders with Hacken’s shareholder base. It added that all valid user balances can still be traced, with a swap mechanism to be revealed shortly.
This breach is the latest addition to an expanding list of crypto hacks in 2025. Blockchain security company PeckShield recently reported more than $1.63 billion of crypto lost over Q1 alone. Meta Pool, a liquid staking platform, was hacked for 9,705 mpETH worth $27 million as recently as last week. The attacker ended up with only $132,000 of Ether.
While Hacken is scrambling to rebuild trust around HAI and convert it into a regulated security token, this incident just became another harsh reminder of crypto's susceptibility to key mismanagement.
