Crypto Whale Repeat Phishing — $25.6M Drain August 2026
Summary
On August 12, 2026, an unidentified Ethereum whale lost approximately $25.6 million in WBTC, cbBTC, aWBTC, DAI, ETH, LDO, USDS, and CRV to a phishing attack that induced the victim to authorize malicious token-approval transactions. The same wallet had previously lost $24.2 million in a nearly identical phishing scheme in September 2023, of which approximately 90% was returned; no funds from the 2026 attack had been recovered as of mid-August 2026. The combined gross exposure across both incidents is approximately $49.8 million, making this one of the most consequential repeat-targeting cases in Ethereum's history.
Connected Entities
1 entities · 10 linked investigationsTimeline(7 events)
2023-09-06
The same Ethereum wallet (partial ID: 0x13e38) lost approximately $24.2 million in rETH and stETH after the victim signed malicious increaseAllowance transactions. The 2023 attacker swapped assets into approximately 13,785 ETH and 1.64 million DAI.
CoinPaper / CryptoSlate2023-09
The 2023 attacker voluntarily returned approximately 90% of stolen funds — approximately $21.8 million — to the victim's wallet. Partial proceeds were traced to FixedFloat exchange.
CryptoPotato / Crypto.news2026-08-12
The same Ethereum whale wallet was drained of $25.6 million in a second phishing attack. Stolen assets included aWBTC ($6.3M), DAI ($5.1M), WBTC ($4.7M), ETH ($2.6M), and smaller amounts of cbBTC, USDS, LDO, and CRV. On-chain analyst Specter flagged the drain; attacker address partial ID reported as 0x8fEB...F95Ae.
Crypto Times / Tron Weekly / Coin Turk2026-08-12
PeckShield confirmed the attacker converted all stolen assets into approximately 20 million DAI and 3,000 ETH, distributed across four separate attacker-controlled addresses.
Tron Weekly / Crypto Adventure2026-08-13
CertiK independently confirmed approximately $25 million in outflows from the victim address. Multiple crypto news outlets published coverage of the incident.
Crypto Adventure2026-08-15
No funds from the 2026 attack had been returned as of mid-week. Weekly crypto losses for August 9–15, 2026 confirmed to exceed $37 million across multiple incidents.
Crypto Times2026-08-16
Crypto Times and AMBCrypto publish comprehensive weekly security roundups contextualizing the whale drain within broader 2026 losses exceeding $1.2 billion year-to-date.
AMBCryptoDecision Log
- #1publish⛓ pending8/18/2026, 12:14:38 PMhash: CrdfqBYhjqojvDwmWZgvneF2M5GW3TwEoMDjfKjaRkEv
13 of 13 cited source URLs have an Internet Archive snapshot.
model: claude-sonnet-4-6
generated: 8/18/2026, 12:14:30 PM
last updated: 8/19/2026, 2:07:16 AM
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