Humanity's $36 million exploit tied to compromised laptop hosting a 'multisig' wallet

TechShareShare this articleCopy linkX iconX (Twitter)LinkedInFacebookEmailHumanity's $36 million exploit tied to compromised laptop hosting a 'multisig' walletThe compromised laptop held enough multisig keys to take over the project's bridges on two chains, a basic security failure for a startup backed by Pantera and Jump Crypto.By Shaurya Malwa|Edited by Sheldon Reback Jun 9, 2026, 12:02 p.m. 2 min readMake preferred on What to know: Humanity Protocol said a hacker stole more than $36 million in H tokens after compromising an employee’s laptop that stored multiple bridge admin keys.The attacker used three of six Ethereum keys and three of five BNB Chain keys, all kept on the same device, to seize control of token bridges, deploy malicious code and drain or mint hundreds of millions of H tokens.The project has halted bridge deposits and withdrawals, is working with exchanges and law enforcement, and faces scrutiny as H trades well below its pre-breach level.Humanity Protocol explained how attackers were able to steal more than $36 million of its H token, and the cause was a serious lapse in how it secured its keys.In an incident update shared with CoinDesk, the decentralized identity project said the breach started when an employee's laptop was compromised. The machine held several keys that controlled the project's token bridges, the tools that move H (and other tokens) between blockchains.Those bridges ran through multisignature wallets, which require a number of separate keys to approve any change. A multisignature wallet is supposed to spread keys across different people and devices so that no single machine can move funds. In this case, all the keys were stored on a single device, meaning a compromise allowed the exploier to cross the approval threshold on both chains, Humanity said.The attacker obtained three of the six keys controlling the bridge's admin account on Ethereum, enough to seize controls linked to the project's deployment on the network.The att…

Humanity's $36 million exploit tied to compromised laptop hosting a 'multisig' wallet

Coins in this story

Related stories

CoinDesk 20 performance update: AAVE Drops 2.6% as all constituents trade lower

BlackRock warns of energy shock as May CPI is set to show acceleration in inflation

This is Bitcoin's Shallowest Bear Market—But is the Bottom In?