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Imagine you rent a storage unit. Inside are things only you can access because you're the only one with the key.
The storage company doesn't control what's inside; they just provide the building.
One month, the company switches the brand of locks they use for new units. Nothing that affects your day-to-day.
However, what you don't know is that, for a short period, someone at the lock manufacturer messed up. A small batch of those locks were made with duplicate keys.
So somewhere out there, someone else has a key that works for your storage, too.
Days later, people start finding their units emptied.
And unfortunately, something similar happened with Trust Wallet.
Trust Wallet is one of the most widely used crypto wallets, especially its Chrome browser extension.
People use it to log into crypto apps, approve transactions, and generally move around the crypto internet.
And right after Christmas - on December 26 - a specific version of that Chrome extension (v2.68) went bad.
It contained malicious code.
Trust Wallet later explained that this version didn't go through their normal manual release process.
Instead, it appears someone got hold of credentials tied to Chrome's extension system and used them to publish a compromised update.
So for a short period of time, Chrome auto-updated people to what looked like the official, trusted version of the wallet.
And here's where it turns serious.
If a user unlocked that extension during the affected window, the malicious code could get their recovery phrase - the string of words that gives full control over a crypto wallet.
By the time it was caught and shut down, roughly $7M worth of crypto had been drained from users' wallets.
Trust Wallet told users to immediately update to v2.69 and stop using the compromised version.
They've also said they'll compensate affected users, while warning people to ignore fake "refund" messages from scammers trying to piggyback on the situation.
Now, on the surface, this sounds like a classic crypto horror story.
But zoom out a little, and it's really a story about trust in modern software.
Crypto wallets don't work like banks. There's no "forgot password" button. If someone gets your recovery phrase, they don’t need to hack you - they are you. The system does exactly what it's designed to do.
What makes this incident uncomfortable is that users didn't mess up in the usual ways: they didn't click a sketchy link or fall for a DM promising free tokens.
They updated the official software from a trusted source and used it normally.
This can be called a supply-chain attack. Instead of targeting individuals one by one, the attacker went after the delivery system everyone relies on.
And browser extensions are a perfect target:
👉 They're powerful by design;
👉 They update automatically;
👉 They sit right where people do their everyday internet activity.
So even though the underlying blockchains were perfectly fine, the human interface layer - the tools people actually touch - failed.
And there's a bigger signal here, too.
As crypto becomes more mainstream, the money in crypto wallets is no longer small or experimental. That attracts more sophisticated attacks.
To Trust Wallet's credit, they moved quickly:
👉 Identifying the bad version;
👉 Pushing fixes;
👉 Communicating publicly;
👉 And offering refunds.
That matters. It's how an industry learns in public.
But the lesson still stands: self-custody gives you control, but it also means your security is only as strong as the tools you trust.
That's why experienced users spread risk: smaller balances in hot wallets, bigger ones stored offline, and browser extensions treated like convenience tools, not vaults.
Stay safe out there.
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