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• 7 min read

Garden Finance Solver Breach:
$450K Drained via Fake Swap Records

$450,000 in solver-owned USDT was drained across four chains after a breached Garden Finance database accepted fake swap records and released unfunded HTLC settlements.

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Garden Finance Solver Breach: $450K Drained via Fake Swap Records
  • Incident Date: July 26, 2026
  • Target: Garden Finance independent solver
  • Target Overview: Garden Finance is a cross-chain bridge and atomic-swap protocol that uses independent solvers and hash time-locked contracts (HTLCs) to exchange Bitcoin and assets on other networks. The affected component was one solver's off-chain database and settlement infrastructure, not a confirmed vulnerability in Garden's HTLC smart contracts.
  • Total Loss: Approximately $450,000 in solver-owned USDT
  • Reported Exploiter Address: 0x25b224c05f6cc5e132165c1621de1a4c3b316999
  • Example Exploit Transaction: 0x9d7a961aa340156b7342839e9f6448a26dea9acd38dc7b2638966eb19e29d395
  • Affected Networks: Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and BNB Smart Chain
  • Attack Vector: Off-chain solver database compromise / fraudulent swap-record injection

Incident Review & Technical Details​

1. Attack Path​

  1. An independent solver's database was compromised: Garden Finance told Cointelegraph that an attacker gained access to the off-chain database operated by one independent solver. The project has not disclosed the solver's identity, the initial access method, the credentials involved, or whether the intrusion reached any systems beyond the database and settlement stack.
  2. The attacker inserted fraudulent swap records: According to Garden, the attacker created database entries representing swaps that had not actually been funded by the counterparty. The compromised records therefore presented nonexistent source-side value as a valid condition for settlement.
  3. The solver released assets against nonexistent funding: The affected solver trusted the fraudulent records and released its own USDT for the fabricated swaps. Garden said the loss was confined to solver-owned assets and that neither user funds nor protocol-controlled funds were placed at risk.
  4. HTLC outflows appeared across four EVM networks: Blockaid detected approximately $450,000 in USDT leaving Garden-related HTLCs on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and BNB Smart Chain. Because the funds were released through live HTLC deployments, the first public alert described an ongoing HTLC exploit before Garden clarified that the triggering compromise occurred off-chain.
  5. The attacker consolidated the proceeds: Blockaid identified 0x25b2...6999 as the exploiter address and published 0x9d7a...d395 as an example Ethereum transaction. An Etherscan snapshot surfaced with the alert showed approximately $424,707 held by the address across four chains at the time, but that snapshot is not a final loss or recovery ledger.
  6. Garden paused the application: Garden reported unusual activity and temporarily took the app offline while it isolated the affected infrastructure and conducted a full investigation. The team said service restoration would follow completion of the relevant security checks.

2. Impact Scope​

  • Solver-Level Loss: Blockaid estimated approximately $450,000 in USDT was drained. Garden said it was still confirming the exact amount, assets, and networks, so the figure remains a public estimate rather than a final project-calculated loss.
  • User Funds: Garden said no user funds were lost or at risk and that the affected assets belonged exclusively to the independent solver.
  • Smart-Contract Scope: Garden stated that its protocol and HTLC smart contracts were not compromised. The contracts released funds because the solver's off-chain settlement inputs were fraudulent, not because Blockaid or Garden had demonstrated a defect in HTLC bytecode.
  • Multi-Chain Exposure: The same operational failure produced outflows on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and BNB Smart Chain, showing that a shared off-chain trust layer can propagate one compromise across several otherwise independent contract deployments.
  • Operational Disruption: Garden's user-facing application was taken offline as a precaution while the solver infrastructure was isolated and reviewed.
  • Prior-Incident Context: Garden reported a separate $11.4 million solver-infrastructure breach in October 2025. The July 2026 incident again affected a solver rather than Garden's protocol contracts, but the reviewed sources do not establish that both breaches shared the same operator, credentials, system, or initial access technique.

3. Official Statements​

  • Garden Finance: Garden announced unusual activity and temporarily disabled its app. A spokesperson later told Cointelegraph that one independent solver's off-chain database had been breached and populated with fraudulent records, while Garden's protocol, HTLC contracts, and user funds remained unaffected.
  • Blockaid: Blockaid reported an ongoing drain of approximately $450,000 in USDT across four networks and then published the reported exploiter address and an example transaction.
  • Security Partners: Garden said it was working with zeroShadow, Quantstamp, and Blockaid to trace and attempt to recover the solver's funds.

4. Investigation Progress​

The available evidence identifies the reported exploiter address, an example Ethereum transaction, four affected networks, and the solver database as the project-attributed entry point. Garden paused services and began reviewing the affected infrastructure, while three security firms assisted with tracing and recovery efforts.

Several material questions remain unanswered:

  • How the attacker first accessed the solver database and whether any application, cloud, endpoint, or administrative credentials were compromised.
  • Why a database record could authorize settlement without an independent verification that the counterparty had actually funded the swap.
  • Which solver operated the affected infrastructure and whether the same control design exists at other independent solvers.
  • The final loss by chain and transaction, the attacker's subsequent fund movements, and whether any USDT was frozen or recovered.
  • Whether Garden's application has fully resumed and which controls were changed before restoration.

Recommended response and prevention measures:

  • Revoke and rotate database, service, cloud, deployment, and settlement credentials associated with the affected solver, while preserving logs and disk images for forensic reconstruction.
  • Require the settlement service to verify source-side funding from authenticated chain data or independently signed evidence rather than trusting mutable database rows.
  • Add per-solver and per-chain exposure limits, withdrawal velocity controls, and a circuit breaker that stops releases when recorded funding and observed chain state diverge.
  • Make swap records append-only and tamper-evident, with privileged writes producing alerts and requiring a second authorization path for high-value settlement.
  • Test every solver deployment against fabricated records, replayed swaps, missing source deposits, reordered events, and compromised database credentials.
  • Publish a final incident report with the complete transaction set, root cause, recovery status, affected solver architecture, and changes made across the broader solver network.

AUTOSEC.DEV Solution​

Garden's incident shows that audited HTLCs cannot protect solver capital when the off-chain system feeding settlement decisions accepts forged economic state as truth.

  1. Security Strategy & Planning — Garden's solver reportedly released USDT after fraudulent database records represented unfunded swaps as valid. AUTOSEC.DEV designs settlement architectures that independently attest source-chain funding, separate record creation from payout authority, cap per-solver exposure, and automatically stop releases when database state diverges from observable chain state.
  2. Penetration Testing — One compromised database produced HTLC releases across Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and BNB Smart Chain. AUTOSEC.DEV tests the complete database-to-settlement path with fabricated records, replayed swap IDs, missing counterparty deposits, credential compromise, and cross-chain timing variations to verify that off-chain manipulation cannot create a payable claim.
  3. Incident Response — Blockaid identified an exploiter address and example transaction while Garden engaged multiple security firms to trace approximately $450,000 in USDT. AUTOSEC.DEV supports solver-host forensics, credential containment, multi-chain transaction reconstruction, attacker-address labeling, and coordination with stablecoin issuers, exchanges, and bridges for freeze and recovery requests.

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