Image by Pierre Borthiry - Peiobty, from Unsplash
Crypto Exchange Cetus Hit By Second-Largest Hack Of 2025
- Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
- Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager
Cetus Protocol was hacked for $223 million in cryptocurrency, prompting a platform freeze, whitehat deal, and a $5 million public bounty.
In a rush? Here are the quick facts:
- $162 million of stolen assets were successfully paused.
- Cetus offered whitehat deal to attacker.
- $5 million bounty offered for hacker info.
Cetus Protocol, a decentralized exchange (DEX) and major liquidity provider on the SUI blockchain, was hacked for $223 million in digital assets. The attackers exploited a vulnerability in the platform’s smart contracts, draining multiple token pools in a matter of minutes.
The blockchain analytics firm Elliptic tracked the stolen funds by observing the attackers swap USDT for USDC stablecoins before transferring them to the Ethereum network for conversion into ETH.
Bleeping Computer (BC) reports how Cetus Protocol initiated a quick response by halting its smart contract operations while starting an internal investigation process. The platform implemented an emergency validator vote which resulted in freezing $162 million of assets.
📜 Dear Sui community, thank you for your patience while our team works on the incident investigation and resolution. Since taking the actions indicated in our previous announcement, we have also done the following: 1. We engaged the broader ecosystem, Sui team, and related… https://t.co/Gs1EWXZ6AD — Cetus🐳 (@CetusProtocol) May 22, 2025
The DEX team located the Ethereum wallet of the hacker while they collaborated with law enforcement agencies and third parties to recover stolen funds.
The DEX presented the hacker with a whitehat proposal which included a deal to return the funds without facing legal consequences. The DEX increased its pressure on the hacker by issuing a $5 million reward for any information that leads to their capture, as reported by BC.
Elliptic notes that the Cetus attack stands as the second-largest cryptocurrency theft of 2025 after the $1.46 billion Bybit theft occurred. The Cetus attack joins other decentralized finance platforms in raising security concerns about their platforms because they lost more than $2 billion to hacking incidents during 2024.
As investigations continue, the industry is watching closely to see how this high-profile case unfolds.
Photo by Luke Jones on Unsplash
Anthropic Releases Its Latest Model Claude 4 With Safety Warnings
- Written by Andrea Miliani Former Tech News Expert
- Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager
The AI startup Anthropic released its latest and most powerful generation of AI models, Claude 4, this Thrusday. The tech company introduced two models, Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4, including a safety protection layer for the latest and labeling it Safety Level 3 due to deceptive behaviour and potential risks.
In a rush? Here are the quick facts:
- Anthropic introduced Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4, the company’s most advanced AI models.
- The AI company assured they have developed the “world’s best coding model.”
- Claude Opus 4 has been labeled Safety Level 3 due to deceptive behaviour and potential risks.
According to the announcement , the new AI models feature advanced coding capabilities, improved reasoning and agentic bahaviours. Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4 are hybrid models that can search the web in extended thinking mode and perform multiple tasks simultaneously.
Anthropic also claims that these new models outperform competing systems such as OpenAI o3, OpenAI GPT-4.1 and Gemini 2.5 Pro.
Introducing the next generation: Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4. Claude Opus 4 is our most powerful model yet, and the world’s best coding model. Claude Sonnet 4 is a significant upgrade from its predecessor, delivering superior coding and reasoning. pic.twitter.com/MJtczIvGE9 — Anthropic (@AnthropicAI) May 22, 2025
“Claude Opus 4 is the world’s best coding model, with sustained performance on complex, long-running tasks and agent workflows,” states the announcement. “Claude Sonnet 4 is a significant upgrade to Claude Sonnet 3.7, delivering superior coding and reasoning while responding more precisely to your instructions.”
According to CNBC , Anthropic has been focusing more in improving its chatbot agentic capabilities rather than developing new chatbots. Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s chief science officer, said that they understand that complex tasks can lead to more risks and they have been working on mitigating them and allowing the AI models to perform mutliple tasks at once.
“We’ve been training these models since last year and really anticipating them,” said Kaplan in an interview with CNBC. “I think these models are much, much stronger as agents and as coders. It was definitely a struggle internally just because some of the new infrastructure we were using to train these models… made it very down-to-the-wire for the teams in terms of getting everything up and running.”
Along with the new models announcement, Anthropic also released a safety note about Claude Opus 4, highlighting that a layer of safety has been included with the model and they have activated the AI Safety Level 3 (ASL-3)—a high-risk classification according to standard safety protocols.
“We are deploying Claude Opus 4 with our ASL-3 measures as a precautionary and provisional action,” states the document. “To be clear, we have not yet determined whether Claude Opus 4 has definitively passed the Capabilities Threshold that requires ASL-3 protections.”
Anthropic shared a more detailed report explaining the model’s risks—incuding its deceptive behavour and potential “biological weaponization proxy tasks”—and the measures taken to mitigate these risks. The AI company assured that it will keep supervise the model and collaborating with other companies, civil society and the government to improve safety measures.
