The recent wave of decentralized finance attacks has a new culprit: artificial intelligence. Mitchell Amador, CEO of Immunefi, a leading bug bounty platform for crypto projects, said the rapid rollout of frontier AI models is the main catalyst behind the resurgence in DeFi hacks. He made the statement in a post on the company's blog Thursday.
What Amador said
According to Amador, the latest generation of AI tools hasn't just made attacks more common—it has fundamentally changed how attackers operate. ''New frontier AI models are the primary catalyst for the latest resurgence in DeFi hacks,'' he wrote. Amador didn't provide specific figures, but pointed to a broader shift in threat actors' capabilities. Immunefi tracks vulnerabilities and bounties across hundreds of DeFi protocols, giving it a front-row seat to the evolving risk.
How AI changes the attacker's playbook
Amador argues that these AI models allow malicious actors to scan code, identify weak spots, and craft exploits faster than ever before. Where hackers once had to manually analyze smart contracts, AI can now surface potential vulnerabilities in minutes. ''We're seeing attackers move from hand-crafted exploits to AI-assisted ones,'' he explained in the post. The result is a higher velocity of incidents, Amador said, and projects are struggling to keep up with patching.
What the industry faces next
DeFi protocols aren't defenseless, but the AI-driven shift demands new security approaches. Immunefi itself has seen an uptick in submissions related to AI-generated exploit attempts, Amador noted. He urged developers to integrate AI into their own security tooling—not just to react but to anticipate. Whether the industry can adapt fast enough, or whether the AI-vs-AI arms race will leave smaller projects behind, is the open question Amador left with his audience.
