Bitcoin bridge Boltz suspends services as AI hacks outpace patches
Bitcoin bridge Boltz has suspended services indefinitely due to repeated attacks on its infrastructure by hackers using AI tools.
Boltz’ announced that it could no longer “responsibly re-enable Boltz swaps” while it’s “being actively targeted by what appear to be multiple resourceful groups while we race to deploy fixes.”
Indeed, the company claimed that over the past few months it had witnessed a “steady rise in automated, AI-assisted probing of our infrastructure” that resulted in several exploits.
Every exploit has apparently been contained, but Boltz is now worried that it can’t keep up with fixing exploits as its attackers “iterate faster than a team our size can find and patch.”
Read more: Coldcard hacker’s BTC wallet flooded with on-chain messages
It said, “What we are seeing is a major paradigm shift for Bitcoin services operating on an open source stack, and it needs careful analysis. Do not expect swap services to resume shortly.”
The company stressed that “no user funds were ever at risk,” and that any “losses were ours alone.”
Boltz Swap Services didn’t hold user funds as a custodian. Instead, the company operated a non-custodial bridge that used hashed timelock contracts to execute atomic swaps between regular BTC, Lightning Network BTC, and Liquid Network BTC.
Funds either fully swapped or fully reverted within one block.
Boltz suspension leads to collateral damage
Boltz’s closure of swap services has had a knock-on effect on Bitcoin firms Bull Bitcoin and Aqua Wallet.
Bull Bitcoin warned that lightning payments and Liquid to Bitcoin swaps in its wallet will now “fail without explanation,” and it’s working to find a solution.
Aqua Wallet similarly warned that these types of swaps are no longer available, and that it’s working with Boltz and attempting to find alternative means for lightning swaps.
A major seed phrase exploit affecting the Bitcoin hardware wallet Coldcard, which has now reportedly led to the theft of over $100 million worth of BTC, is also believed to have originated from AI software.
Read more: Former FBI agent indicted for stealing crypto from FBI
These two high profile exploits have led to concern over AI usage by hackers.
In response to Boltz’ pause, Swan co-founder Yan Pritzker said, “AI attackers are getting more and more sophisticated and small teams are going to have a tough time keeping up with the attacks.
“There’s a significant overhead to building and running enterprise security in the age of LLMs, which will price out many innovative startups wanting to work on services related to client funds — even non custodial ones. Which really sucks.”
Former Lightning Labs business developer Lucas Ferreira described Boltz’ situation as “very unfortunate.” He noted that while its team was “brilliant,” it’s still only a small team facing AI-powered groups of hackers.
He added, “We’ll need more funding for the open-source space if we want our infrastructure to remain secure and resilient.”
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