GriffinAI Hack

What happened

On September 24, 2025, unauthorized cross-chain minting created roughly five billion GAIN on BNB Chain. Griffin AI said a malicious Ethereum peer contract enabled the mint. It announced an October 6 token relaunch and a founder-funded $2.5 million recovery and buyback program.

Technical root cause

A malicious cross-chain peer enabled unauthorized GAIN minting on BNB Chain.

How it happened

1. The attacker deployed a malicious peer contract on Ethereum.
2. Cross-chain interaction minted unauthorized GAIN on BNB Chain.
3. A portion of those tokens was sold.
4. Griffin AI arranged replacement tokens using a pre-incident snapshot.

Protocol details

Classification Infrastructure / Other / Bridge & Cross-Chain

Protocol Type Exploit/Access control

Category Bridge Hack

Implementation language Solidity

Protocol links Website @Griffin_AI

Evidence

• report @CertiKAlert incident report x.com
• report @PeckShieldAlert incident report x.com
• analysis Website reference crypto.news
• analysis DeFiLlama defillama.com
• analysis The wait is over: Griffin AI is re-launching its GAIN token on major exchanges blog.griffinai.io

Understand the attack patterns

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Access Control Attacks