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By Rekt News    Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow Click here for a loss of $13 million. A whale at Venus Protocol has just learned from the harrowing experience that Zoom calls can cost more than your mortgage. A malicious video client, a perfectly timed signature, $13 million disappeared faster than the rug pull announcement. But the twist in the story is that Venus didn't just watch users being hollowed out and then left indifferent. They shut down their protocol, urgently called a vote, and completed the most controversial "rescue operation" in the DeFi space in less than 12 hours. What started as a seemingly ordinary phishing attack eventually evolved into a great masterclass in whether decentralized protocols can "fish and bear". When rescuing the whale means exposing a hidden kill switch in the protocol, who is truly rescued? Source: Peckshield, Venus Protocol, Blocksec, Kuan Sun September 2, 9:05 UTC. A whale from Venus Protocol has launched their Zoom client, ready to kickstart a new day in DeFi. But seemingly innocent video software is quietly hacked, giving attackers access to their entire device through a backdoor. Why crack codes? Wouldn't it be easier to break trust directly? The victim signs a delegated authorization transaction – a routine operation that occurs thousands of times a day in DeFi. A protocol to manage your positions without having access to the private key. In general, signing these agreements is faster than reading the terms of service. Click. Signature. Instantly "liquidated". From signature to financial ruin, just six seconds. A breached video client thus handed over the management of a $13 million wallet to an attacker who patiently waited for the opportunity. This is where most phishing stories end – the whales suffer, the attackers disappear, and the taunts of victims on Twitter continue for a week. But this time, the thief's plan is much more ambitious than a simple "robbery". What happens when stealing millions of dollars isn't enough satisfaction? Theft operation 09:05:36 UTC. Just six seconds after the whale signed their "crypto suicide protocol", the attackers launched a flash loan "masterpiece". Vulnerability Trading: 0x4216f924ceec9f45ff7ffdfdad0cea71239603ce3c22056a9f09054581836286 Venus Protocol's postmortem deconstructs the attacker's tactics in detail: Step 1: Lightning borrows 285.72 BTCB – after all, why use your own money? DeFi allows you to borrow millions of funds without collateral. Step 2: Use the borrowed funds to pay off the victim's existing debt, while adding 21 BTCB to the attacker's own account. What seems generous is actually a ruthless "accounting murder". Step 3: Activate delegated permissions. The entire digital assets of the victims were transferred – including $19.8 million worth of vUSDT, $7.15 million worth of vUSDC, 285 BTCB, and a long list of other tokens. All this is completely legal, because the "naïve" signature six seconds ago has been authorized to be done. Step 4: A brilliant blow. Using these newly stolen assets as collateral, $7.14 million in USDC was borrowed based on the victim's remaining BNB. The attacker not only emptied the wallet, but also made the victim pay for his "theft". Step 5: Borrow enough BTCB to repay the flash loan. The transaction is completed, and the attacker quietly disappears. An automated transaction, a hollowed-out whale, a very satisfied crypto thief – who had just turned someone else's life savings into their own mortgage toy yard. However, greed often turns hunters into prey. What happens when a "perfect theft" turns into a "suicide operation"? Countermeasures 09:09 UTC. Four minutes after the digital bank theft, Hexagate and Hypernative's surveillance systems began sounding alerts. This isn't your average "suspicious transaction detected" prompt. It was a $13 million level five alert, and security companies immediately knew who to contact. Venus Protocol's response? The nuclear option is launched directly. From theft to protocol suspension, it took only twenty minutes. Venus has activated their own kill switch, freezing all core functions across the ecosystem. Borrowing? Stop it. Withdrawal? Pull the plug. Liquidation? Time out. A user was phished, and the entire protocol was shut down. It's not just crisis control – it's a financial battle. Venus decisively restricted its platform, trying to trap the stolen goods from the attackers. Every vToken held by the hacker instantly turned into worthless waste paper, locked under Venus' emergency authority. But freezing an entire DeFi protocol to save a whale? Such a decision is not something that the development team can make alone. Thus, democracy enters: emergency governance voting. When the community has only twelve hours to decide whether to save a user's wealth through centralized means, can you really call it decentralization? Lightning democracy Venus not only paused the protocol but also called an emergency "virtual meeting" that would be the envy of any Web2 crisis management team. They call it a "lightning vote". After all, nothing better than "grassroots governance" like squashing millions of dollars into hours of heated Discord debates. The proposal is simple and clear: Phase 1: Partial recovery function (allows users to avoid being liquidated). Stage 2: Forced liquidation of the attacker's position. Stage 3: Conduct a comprehensive security review to prevent similar incidents from happening again. Phase 4: Full restoration of Venus operations. The community's reaction? 100% unanimous. Not 99%. Not 98% either. Every vote supports Venus' plan of action, as if it were some kind of DeFi version of the North Korean election results. Perhaps this is a real consensus, or perhaps it is out of self-protection. Or when your agreement is losing millions of dollars while competitors circle you like vultures, disagreement becomes a luxury that no one can afford. By the afternoon, Venus was empowered. What follows is the execution of the most controversial liquidation operation in DeFi history - an operation that requires bypassing smart contract rules and forcibly seizing the attacker's collateral. The victim is in crisis because of a wrong transaction signature, and Venus is about to sign the "death certificate of democracy". What happens when Code as Law meets Emergency Authority? Recovery Action 21:36 UTC. Twelve hours after the theft, Venus carried out their counterattack. Remember the mistakes made by attackers out of greed? Using stolen funds as collateral is about to become the most expensive blunder in history. One transaction, multiple instructions, causing the most controversy. Liquidation: Start. Asset seizure: Complete. Liquidation: Closed. Venus has just operated on a running blockchain. Activate the kill switch, grab all unlocked assets, and destroy all evidence. The "masterpiece" of the attacker eventually became his own death sentence. Those stolen collateral lie safe in Venus' pool? Suddenly, the protocol's newly launched "emergency liquidation" power became fair game. Greed is a dose of poison. Stealing millions, using them as collateral, and then being liquidated by your own stolen funds. 21:58 UTC. Light restoration. Funds are recovered. The crisis is lifted. But no one talks about losses worth $13 million anymore. People are talking about how Venus is proving that "decentralization" is nothing more than a marketing slogan in these 12 hours. It turns out that your unstoppable DeFi protocol has a very blockable emergency brake – and they don't hesitate to use it when the cost is high enough. Who is being overthrown when a revolution needs a king to sustain it? The victim spoke up "Although it may be considered a fool, it is better to remain silent than to speak up and dispel all doubts." This is the Twitter profile of Kuan Sun, the founder of Eureka Crypto and the victim of the $13 million theft. Speaking of "stupidity", he posted a detailed review article explaining how exactly he was deceived. Venus Protocol also confirmed that he was the one who was the victim of the phishing attack. This social engineering method is very evil. The attackers began their layout in April this year, hacking a "Stack Asia BD" contact that Sun Kuan met at a conference in Hong Kong. A few months of patience paved the way to gradually build trust through familiar but not overly intimate relationships. The malicious Zoom client has long since given the attacker access to his device. During a fake meeting: "Your microphone is not working, please upgrade." "This is another layered scam that covers attackers operating in the background. Subsequently, the Chrome browser crashes unexpectedly. "Restore tab?" Click. Somehow, his trusted Rabby wallet extension was replaced with a fake version that removed all security warnings. Venus withdraws, like he has done thousands of times before. But this time, there are no risk warnings, no trading demo previews, and no security checks. The compromised front-end disguises an authorization operation as an ordinary transaction. Hardware wallets don't matter. Rabby's security features are also not important. When the frontend is poisoned, even the tightest security settings can only create a false sense of security. To make matters worse, according to the victims' recollections, the attack was allegedly carried out by the Lazarus Group, an elite North Korean hacking group that has been carrying out terrorist activities in the cryptocurrency space for years. This time he was not fished by a rookie, but was accurately defeated by national digital warfare experts, who may have polished this attack process to perfection. Now, he thanks Venus Protocol, PeckShield, SlowMist, Chaos Labs, Hexagate, HyperactiveLabs, Binance, and others who helped him recover his funds. It was a happy ending, thanks to an agreement that was willing to break its own rules when it came to personal interests. Is there anyone in DeFi who is truly safe when the world's most sophisticated hackers can deceive hardware wallets and security-conscious users? Venus both saved the whale and shattered the dream of decentralization in a single transaction. Twelve hours of coordination chaos proved that behind every so-called "decentralized" protocol lies a centralized "panic button" hidden by governance mechanisms. Sure, the community voted – but when 100% consensus is faster than Discord's debate about gas fees, you've witnessed democracy's greatest magic: making autocracy look like collective decision-making. The attackers returned empty-handed, the whales reclaimed their wealth, and Venus showed that they could overturn their code at any time in the face of immense digital pressure. The mission is accomplished, and the reputation is ruined. The real tragedy is not that someone fell for the Zoom phishing scam, but that the protocols we still pretend to have emergency permissions are fundamentally different from the traditional financial system they claim to replace. If decentralization dies once it becomes inconvenient, has it really existed?