Understanding the Curve Finance DNS hijacking

On May 12, 2025, at 20:55 UTC, hackers hijacked the “.fi” domain name system (DNS) of Curve Finance after managing to access the registrar.

On Thursday, May 12, at 20:55 UTC, hackers hijacked the “.fi” domain name system (DNS) of Curve Finance after managing to access the registrar. The hackers began sending its users to a malicious website, attempting to drain their wallets. This was the second attack on Curve Finance’s infrastructure in a week.

As part of a phishing campaign, users were directed to a website that was a non-functional decoy, designed only to trick users into providing wallet signatures. The hack hadn’t breached the protocol’s smart contracts and was limited to the DNS layer.

The DNS is a critical component of the internet that functions like a phonebook. It allows you to use simple, memorable domain names (such as facebook.com) instead of complex numerical IP addresses (like 192.168.1.1) for websites. DNS converts these user-friendly domain names into the IP addresses computers require to connect.

This is not the first time Curve Finance, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, has suffered such an attack. Back in August 2022, Curve Finance faced an attack with similar tactics. The attackers had cloned the Curve Finance website and interfered with its DNS settings to send users to a duplicate version of the website. Users who tried using the platform ended up losing their money to the attackers. The project was using the same registrar, “iwantmyname,” at the time of the previous attack.