Aftermath Finance Hacker Sent $1.14M to KuCoin — Here Is What Happened

 


A DeFi protocol on Sui just had $1.14 million drained from its perpetuals vault. Then the attacker did something unusual. They sent the stolen funds directly to KuCoin.

Aftermath Finance confirmed the exploit on April 29, 2026. The attack ran through eleven transactions over thirty-six minutes, targeting a flaw in how the protocol handled builder code fees. The system was designed to reward third-party developers who route trading volume through the platform. Someone found that negative fee values could be set, reversing the payout direction and pulling USDC out of the vault instead.

The protocol's swaps, staking, and all other products stayed untouched throughout. Only the perpetuals product was hit. Total confirmed damage: 1.14 million dollars.

What drew immediate attention from the crypto security community was where the funds went after the exploit. Crypto commentator FabianoSolana flagged on X that the attacker routed everything to KuCoin, a centralized exchange that requires full identity verification and can freeze accounts on request. He tagged KuCoin executives and on-chain investigator ZachXBT in the same post.

Aftermath confirmed it is now working with zeroShadow, Seal, Blockaid, and OtterSec on fund tracing and has opened every available law-enforcement channel. A patch for the affected contracts is already in development.

The recovery side of this story is also worth noting. Mysten Labs and the Sui Foundation stepped in within hours and committed to covering all user losses. Every person with funds in the affected protocol will be made whole. Zero losses confirmed by the team.

Aftermath also clarified the flaw was not a Move contract-language issue, meaning the vulnerability was specific to their fee configuration rather than anything foundational to the Sui network itself.

For the full breakdown of how the exploit worked, what the negative builder fee flaw actually means, and how the recovery is being structured, read the complete report at CryptoNewsLive.org.

The attacker's wallet address has been made public and is under active monitoring by multiple security firms.

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