Blockchain lending firm Figure breached in social engineering attack

Figure Technology, a prominent blockchain-based fintech company, has acknowledged a security incident involving unauthorized access to its data.

In a statement, Alethea Jadick, a spokesperson for Figure Technology, said the breach occurred when an employee fell for a social engineering scam, allowing hackers to gain access to a few files.

The firm confirmed that it is communicating with partners and affected parties regarding the breach. Moreover, it pointed out that complimentary credit monitoring is available to all recipients of this notice. Nonetheless, reporters claimed that Figure’s spokesperson failed to address certain questions concerning the breach details.

Breach incidents in the tech industry remain a key concern

The figure’s breach incident has sparked security concerns among individuals, igniting heated discussions in the industry. In this scenario, reports stressed that ShinyHunters, a notorious black-hat criminal hacking and extortion group, took credit for the breach on its dark web portal. According to the hackers, the company refused to meet their demands, prompting them to leak 2.5 gigabytes of allegedly stolen data.

In response to this action, Figure stated that,  “We recently found out that an employee was manipulated into giving access, which let someone download a limited number of files through their account. We took immediate action to stop the activity and hired a forensic firm to investigate which files were impacted.”  

Following this statement, sources declared that the approach applied in this case was Social engineering, a psychological manipulation of people into performing actions such as granting unauthorized access or divulging confidential information, acting as a form of “human hacking”.

Meanwhile, to demonstrate the intensity of the situation, Chainalysis shared a report last month noting that scammers stole an estimated $17 billion in cryptocurrency last year, using AI to enhance impersonation and social engineering.

Their report showed that data breaches remained a key concern in the tech industry last year, further heightening tensions this year.  This was after a report from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, dated December 2025, revealed that regulators recorded more than 8,000 filings covering more than 4,000 distinct scenarios that significantly affected at least 374 million people.

While Figure’s spokesperson provided limited details about the firm’s breach, an anonymous individual from the ShinyHunters group informed a reliable source that the breach was part of a broader campaign targeting companies that use the Okta single sign-on service. In the meantime, sources mentioned that other alleged victims were the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University.

Step Finance encounters a breach in its operation 

As breach incidents continue to be a significant challenge in the industry, Step Finance, a prominent DeFi platform particularly within the Solana blockchain ecosystem, announced that several of its treasury and fee wallets were compromised, prompting an investigation into the breach.

Following its announcement, onchain data revealed that hackers unstaked about 261,854 SOL and moved them to an unknown address. At the moment, the blockchain security company CertiK claimed that the price of SOL was around $110, implying that these transfers accounted for almost $29 million in value.

Meanwhile, in attempts to calm down the tension among its clients, Step Finance shared an X post, highlighting that, “We experienced a security breach in some of our treasury wallets a few hours ago, and we are currently looking into it… We will share more details later.” The platform also disclosed that it engaged cybersecurity experts to assist with the investigation.

Nonetheless, Step Finance failed to mention the primary cause of the breach. This sparked speculation in the ecosystem, with some alleging it stemmed from a smart contract flaw and others claiming it was due to an access control issue. The main question raised at the moment was whether user funds outside the treasury were affected. 

These concerns prompted reporters to reach out to Step Finance for clarity on the speculations and questions raised, but it declined to respond.