🚨 Shibarium Bridge Security Update

Date: September 20, 2025 (UTC)
Status: Containment holding • Investigation active

Personal Foreword

I want to clarify first: I’m not “the lead.” I never was and never want to be. I’m just a builder who bet on SHIB’s ethos—in my language, it translates to Vasudev Kutumbakam (the world as one family, where everyone should win). Keeping that concept in mind, I saw the possibility to bring my talent to a platform where we could empower people to take ownership of their lives and live self-sustaining lives.

But vision is cheap, as we see from our leaders; execution is hard. Executing with little treasury is even harder, and doing that while facing a lot of skepticism and hate/FUD is insane. Still, our community has shipped more in the past four years than many chains manage in a lifetime. I’ve personally put in time, energy, health, family moments, and money into SHIB because I believe it can be more than just speculation.

In moments like these, you realize you may have just been a pawn in the whole game and hope you haven’t made mistakes along the way.

Many people think our execution was very slow, but please believe me: if we had moved faster, we could have ended up in a deeper hole than we are now. For example, looking at the number of scams that came out of Shib Deployer 1, we maintained the sanctity of Shib Deployer 2 and used it only for official needs. Today, I cannot vouch for the safety of any keys we have, given the sophistication of this attack and the possible links between LEASH rebasing, arbitrage, and the bridge hack and possible future attacks.

So whoever is behind this—if their purpose was to break me and the team—they’ve achieved that goal along with the monetary benefits. Hearing this will make many individuals and former team members extremely happy and satisfied. So congratulations on the win. But I am done trying to keep it all together, especially when the so-called “leaders” who benefited from all this get to walk away, or walk away in the name of “earning from other places to fix things,” while some of us are left holding everything with no support at all.

Right before this attack happened, I was celebrating a small win with the team—the cross-chain ShibaSwap work and the new ShibaSwap UI launch—and I was about to propose my plan to “fix” the problems in our ecosystem. This plan included solutions for fragmentation, a multichain DEX upgrade, an improved rewards engine, liquidity incentives via gauges, a reputation/attestation/roles layer, modified council elections, IP tokenization with royalties tied to rewards and burns, integrated NFTs/gaming/metaverse, privacy and scaling with modular rollups, and growth and ambassador programs. However now I don't think I will have the capacity to execute and deliver any of this anymore—especially after this incident, when we were already down and they decided to kick us over and over again. and I don’t know when this will ever stop.

This is a serious incident. We’ve contained the immediate damage (it could have been worse) and are working with independent specialists and authorities. You’ll only see what we can safely share while an adversary is active; when it no longer increases risk, we’ll publish the full technical postmortem. My loyalty is to SHIB, the ecosystem, and everyone who put their trust in me.

What happened (high‑level)

• On September 12, 2025 at 18:44 UTC, unauthorized validator signing power was used to push a malicious state/exit through the PoS bridge, withdrawing multiple assets.
• The method combined short‑lived stake amplification with malicious checkpoint/exit proofs to authorize withdrawals.
• Since then, on‑chain activity linked to the attacker has sold portions of certain tokens, notably ETH, SHIB and $ROAR.
• We’re not publishing the evolving wallet graph while containment measures and law‑enforcement coordination are ongoing.

What we’ve done so far

To avoid helping the attacker, we’re sharing actions only at a high level:

• Containment: Restricted specific bridge operations to prevent new unauthorized exits.
• Contract‑side protections: Upgraded and gated paths that could be abused (deposits/withdrawals/claims/rewards) and added targeted defensive controls against misuse of delegated stake.
• Asset protection: Recovered and secured at‑risk BONE held at the stake‑manager level; the attacker’s short‑term BONE stake remains effectively immobilized by our interventions and protocol mechanics.
• Key & custody hygiene: Rotated validator signers; migrated contract control to multi‑party hardware custody; continued broad migrations away from legacy keys.
• 24/7 monitoring: Live surveillance of attacker flows; automated alerts and escalations to partners and exchanges.
• External coordination: Engaged independent security researchers, incident‑response firms, and relevant authorities.

We’ll release the full technical narrative after doing so no longer increases risk.

Independent Open-Source Intelligence investigations

Several independent OSINT researchers (Seal team unaffiliated with the SHIB team) have conducted significant analysis into potential persona clusters, infrastructure, and historical patterns that may overlap with this incident.

• We appreciate their work and thank them for continuing helping us without whom we will be clueless on many fronts.
• To protect the investigative process and reduce legal/safety risk for all, they will publish their own findings separately on their channels.
• We will not amplify unverified personal details in official updates.

Roadmap preview (without operational details)

We’re sharing phase gates and objectives, not playbooks or dates:

Phase A — Containment (ongoing)

• Maintain bridge restrictions and live monitoring.
• Keep contract‑level safeguards active and validated.
• Continue exchange & law‑enforcement coordination.

Phase B — Hardening (in progress collaboration with Hexens)

• Complete signer/validator hygiene and custody improvements.
• Land policy‑level controls across bridging components (e.g., rate‑limits, challenge windows, circuit‑breakers).
• Extend deny‑list controls where technically appropriate to inhibit malicious delegator/exit behavior.

Phase C — Safe Restoration (gated)

• No re‑enablement until:
  1. Independent reviews sign off on mitigations,
  2. Post‑incident integrity checks pass, and
  3. Drills on test environments succeed.
• Restoration will be phased (scoped caps), with rollback levers in place.

Phase D — Postmortem & Community Process

• Publish the full technical postmortem with root cause and permanent fixes once safe.
• Propose a community‑reviewed remediation path for affected users/liquidity (token‑specific approaches may differ).

Community FAQ (current best answers)

Note: The answers below reflect our current understanding and may evolve as the investigation and third‑party reviews proceed. Where sharing additional detail could raise risk, we’ve kept the response high‑level.

Validator Compromise & Accountability

Q: Who controlled the signing keys for the compromised validators, and who bears responsibility for their management?
A: The validator signing keys were primarily stored in AWS KMS, with rare usage on developer machines for administrative tasks. Ultimate responsibility for key management sits with the project’s operational leadership, and we’re reviewing controls, processes, and custody to ensure this cannot recur.

Q: How did the attacker gain access to validator keys (server breach, developer machine compromise, other)?
A: We have not yet confirmed a single vector. We are moving to onboard an independent forensic firm. Based on preliminary analysis, potential vectors include:

1. Developer machine compromise,
2. Cloud KMS compromise,
3. Exposure during migration from AWS to GCP, and/or
4. A supply‑chain attack (e.g., npm) intersecting our environment.

Q: Why did 10 of 12 validators sign the malicious state? Does this reveal deeper issues with decentralization or the validator setup?
A: Evidence indicates key compromise across those validators. We agree that this exposes decentralization shortcomings. Increasing validator decentralization, strengthening key‑rotation policy, and tightening custody are central to our hardening plan.

Q: What are “internal validators,” how many were internal, and were they all compromised?
A: “Internal validators” refers to validators operated under our control (e.g., within our infra perimeter/VPN). The compromised set included internal validators. (We’re not publishing the full topology during the active phase.)

Q: How much self‑delegation did these validators have? What were the BONE earnings used for? Why weren’t they labeled as internal on Shib.io?
A: ~10,000 BONE self‑delegation per validator. Rewards were never withdrawn or used. We acknowledge labeling could have been clearer; disclosures and validator transparency will be improved going forward.

Q: Why were 10 internal validators used? Why not onboard more external validators sooner?
A: Decentralization has always been the plan, but it was deprioritized while we focused on other roadmap items. Historically, many validator applicants were unknown parties unwilling to KYC, and early outreach to professional validator operators did not progress. We chose internal validators behind a VPN for perceived safety—that judgment was wrong, and we are correcting it.

Q: What hiring practices and due diligence apply to internal developers with sensitive access?
A: We use a recognized HR platform for onboarding contractors; government‑issued ID and other due‑diligence checks are performed and kept current. We will provide details to authorities upon request and are raising the bar on access controls and background verification.

Network Operations & Timeline

Q: How will users bridge assets back to Ethereum while the bridge is paused, and when will it be safe to resume?
A: TBD. Safety first. Bridging remains restricted during containment/hardening. We will announce the precise process only when it is safe and verified.

Q: What is the official timeline for bridge resumption, validator rotation, and full audit? How will updates be delivered?
A: TBD. We won’t publish dates that could be gamed by an adversary. Updates will appear on official channels (website + verified socials). If we adopt a regular cadence, we’ll announce it there.

Fund Recovery & User Compensation

Q: How will stolen funds (e.g., ETH, SHIB, KNINE, etc.) be replaced or compensated? Will there be a claims process with deadlines?
A: TBD. Our focus is containment, hardening, and investigating recovery avenues. Any remediation path will be communicated after security is assured and numbers are final.

Q: If funds can’t be recovered despite bounties and investigations, what is the contingency plan (treasury drawdown, burn, insurance fund, etc.)?
A: TBD. We are evaluating options. Any proposal will be published for community review once viable and secure.

Guidance for users

• Beware of scams. We will never DM you to send funds, sign messages, or “verify” wallets.
• Do not use unverified “recovery/claim portals.” Any official process will be posted across all official channels at the same time.
• Expect restricted bridge features until we confirm it’s safe to restore.
• Share credible tips at shibainuteam@pm.me

Communication cadence

We will continue to publish regular status updates that add confirmed facts without aiding the adversary. The next major communication will be the technical postmortem and a remediation proposal once the environment is safe for full disclosure.

Closing

Our priorities are unchanged: protect users, secure the network, contain the attacker, and restore services safely. Thank you for your patience and for sticking to verified information while we finish this work the right way.