Humanity Protocol Reveals Cause of $31M Exploit

Humanity Protocol has confirmed that the June 8 attack resulted from a compromised developer machine infected with malware. The attacker gained root access and obtained seven private keys that had been unintentionally backed up to the device during the project’s mainnet launch, including the admin hot wallet key and six Safe owner keys across Ethereum and BNB Chain. The incident was not caused by a smart contract vulnerability. Instead, the attacker used legitimate private keys to authorize transactions, highlighting operational security risks rather than flaws in the protocol’s code. The findings are likely to increase focus on key management, access controls, and infrastructure security across crypto projects.