World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a crypto project linked to the U.S. President Donald Trump, said on Wednesday that it has stopped hackers from stealing tokens during its launch by blocking hacked user accounts on the blockchain.
WLFI stated that a designated wallet carried out “mass blacklisting” transactions to disable accounts identified as compromised before the launch. The team clarified that these hacking attempts originated from end-user compromises, such as private key losses, and were not exploits of the WLFI project itself.
The blacklisting measures protected the project’s “Lockbox,” a vesting mechanism designed to safeguard locked token allocations for users. “This allowed us to block the theft attempts from the Lockbox,” WLFI stated, providing links to two Etherscan transactions demonstrating the blacklist actions.
Scammers are targeting WLFI users
The WLFI team is collaborating with affected users to help them regain access to their accounts. Bad actors have continued to target WLFI users following the project’s token unlock on Monday, when 24.6 billion WLFI tokens were released to enable trading for the first time.
Since the event, hackers and scammers have sought to exploit the situation by targeting both users and the project infrastructure. Analytics firm Bubblemaps detected “bundled clones,” which are imitation smart contracts mimicking WLFI’s legitimate ones. These fakes are intended to deceive users into interacting with them, leading to the theft of cryptocurrency assets.
EIP-7702 Upgrade Exposes Off-Chain Security Risk
Additionally, Yu Xian, Founder of security firm SlowMist, reported that certain WLFI holders have had their tokens drained via a known exploit involving the Ethereum Improvement Proposal EIP-7702 upgrade. Xian described it as a “classic EIP-7702 phishing exploit,” in which hackers use the EIP-7702 upgrade to rob WLFI token wallets.
This setup enables the theft of tokens during deposits. The EIP-7702 upgrade, part of Ethereum’s Pectra update in May, permits externally owned accounts to temporarily function as smart contract wallets. The system allows users to delegate tasks and process multiple transactions at once to make things easier.
The upgrade aimed to improve user experience, but security experts found a new risk that lets hackers steal funds using just an off-chain signature.
Also Read: World Liberty Burns 47M WLFI Tokens After Historic Launch
