Original sourceCryptoSlateAdditional: TokenTopNews
Summary
A Chainalysis report finds so-called "blockchain dead drops"—malicious data written immutably into transactions or contracts—surged 440% in under a year, from about 2.06 writes per day to 11.1. Open-weight AI models have lowered the barrier to building command-and-control infrastructure, letting sm…
Key points
- Understanding attackers' new low-cost coordination model helps exchanges, wallets, and enterprises adjust monitoring metrics rather than simply blocking entire chains.
- On-chain infrastructure has become a low-cost command channel for state-level hackers, forcing defense thinking to shift from takedowns to continuous monitoring.
- Exchanges, wallet providers, and enterprises need to invest in on-chain analytics and RPC anomaly detection or risk missing hidden command-and-control activity.
- The report traces the technique to EtherHiding, exposed by Guardio Labs in October 2023, and notes the first state-level adoption in 2025.
Editorial note
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