Qubic restarts its chain and opens recovery claims after an attacker drained about 1,400 wallets created with weak seeds

Published Sun, 18 Oct 2026 12:00:00 UTC · Updated Wed, 21 Oct 2026 01:05:39 UTC · Edited by Bizzle · AI-assisted

🔴Bearish for $QUBICAn attacker drained more than 1,400 Qubic wallets through weak seeds; the chain has restarted with a claims process, but older web-wallet users are told to treat their wallets as insecure.News sentiment, not financial advice. It reflects the likely impact of this news, not a price prediction.

Summary

Layer-1 network Qubic halted its chain at tick 85,371,949 after an attacker drained about 2.94 trillion QU from more than 1,400 wallets, Cointelegraph and Crypto Briefing reported, citing the project; Crypto Briefing put the count at 1,404 wallets.

Qubic said the flaw was in how wallet seeds were generated, not in the network’s code, affecting seeds made in any browser on an iPhone or iPad, in Safari on a Mac until Oct. 18, 2026, or in the Qubic iOS app before July 2025, according to Cointelegraph.

Qubic said 87.1% of the drained funds never left the network and remain frozen, while the other 12.9% went to MEXC, which froze the receiving account within about an hour, both outlets reported.

Qubic has since restarted the network, which its explorer shows resumed processing at 8:00 pm on Oct. 19 past the halted tick, after the Computors who run the network approved a recovery plan, Cointelegraph reported on Oct. 20.

Outlets differ on the dollar figure: Cointelegraph said about $1.4 million was taken, while Crypto Briefing put it at about $1.3 million at the time.

Updates

Update, Wed, 21 Oct 2026 01:05:39 UTC: Oct. 20: Cointelegraph reported that Qubic restarted its chain after Computors approved a recovery plan, and opened a claims platform where affected wallet holders can submit claims until May 1, 2027. Qubic told users who made a wallet with its web wallet before version 4.26.4 (released Oct. 19) to treat it as insecure, update, create a new wallet and move their funds.

Key facts

Crypto Briefing said the attack ran from 23:42 UTC on Oct. 17 to 01:26 UTC on Oct. 18, about 1 hour and 44 minutes, before validators stopped the chain. (Crypto Briefing)
Cointelegraph said a GitHub commit for Qubic web wallet version 4.26.4 replaced JavaScript’s Math.random() with the cryptographically secure crypto.getRandomValues() when creating wallet seeds. (Cointelegraph)
Crypto Briefing said Bitget suspended QUBIC deposits and withdrawals, that Qubic’s QEARN staking feature was not affected, and that developers said they also secured other funds exposed to the same flaw before they could be taken. (Crypto Briefing)
Cointelegraph said Qubic plans to publish a full technical report once a recovery plan is settled, and that QU had a market capitalization of about $62.6 million per CoinGecko at the time of its report. (Cointelegraph)
Crypto Briefing said affected users are being told to file police reports, and that this is the second incident in 2026 involving a component adjacent to Qubic’s core, after the Vottun Bridge exploit in August. (Crypto Briefing)
Qubic said affected users can check their address and submit a claim through its reclaim platform until May 1, 2027, Cointelegraph reported. (Cointelegraph)
Qubic said it fixed the seed-generation flaw in web wallet version 4.26.4 and told anyone with a wallet created before that version to move funds to a new wallet, according to Cointelegraph. (Cointelegraph)