Telegram trading bot hacks and exploits: full history
A dated record of security incidents on Telegram trading bots. Each loss figure and refund note below comes from a page opened on 2026-10-28. Where two sources disagree, both numbers are given and marked as reported.
Timeline
Oldest first. Only incidents with a vendor statement or a security write-up we opened are included. A single user report that the vendor denied stays on that bot's check page.
24 October 2023: Maestro router
What happened. To trade a token, a user approves Maestro's router contract to move that token. CertiK's incident analysis says the Maestro router had a function with no permission check, so an attacker could make the router call transferFrom and pull approved tokens to the attacker's address. The Block describes the same path: the caller supplied a token, the victim's address and their own address, and the router moved the tokens. Private keys were not the thing taken. The Block says Maestro replaced the router logic with a harmless contract about 30 minutes after the breach was found, which stopped further transfers.
Estimated loss. The Block: more than 280 ETH, which it put at $500,000. CertiK: about 280 ETH, from 106 users. PeckShield, cited by The Block, said the funds were sent to Railgun.
Refund. Maestro said it would refund users (The Block). A Chainwire release published on Decrypt, quoting Maestro, says the team then spent 610 ETH of its own revenue, which it put at about $1.1 million, and finished within about 10 hours. Of that, Maestro said 276 ETH bought back 9 of the 11 tokens, and 334 ETH paid Joe (JOE) and Lockheed Martin Inu (LMI) holders the ether value of their tokens plus 20%, because there was not enough liquidity to buy those two back. The same release says CertiK checked the 334 ETH payouts. CertiK's own write-up, which we also opened, describes the theft and does not repeat the refund total.
Sources. The Block, 25 October 2023 (the story is dated the 25th and describes the theft as that day's news; CertiK dates the attack 24 October). CertiK, 2 November 2023. Maestro's refund announcement, via Decrypt / Chainwire, 6 November 2023.
On this site. Maestro check official links.
31 October 2023: Unibot router
What happened. Same shape as Maestro, on a router Unibot had just deployed. Unibot called it a token-approval exploit on its new router, said it had paused the router, and said keys and wallets were safe (quoted by The Block and CoinDesk). CertiK says the router would call outside token contracts with no real check, so the attacker could call transferFrom on tokens users had approved. Revoke.cash says the router passed on any instruction it was given, the attack ran about nine hours, and Unibot never fixed that router: it stopped using it. An approval that is still active can still be used. Revoke.cash also says Unibot's account of the attack is that only tokens approved to this router were taken, not ETH balances.
Estimated loss. The figures do not match, so each one is reported. PeckShield's first alert, cited by The Block: roughly $580,000. PeckShield later the same day, quoted by CoinDesk: the attacker swapped the stolen tokens for about 355.75 ETH, which PeckShield put at about $640,000, and sent that ether through Tornado Cash. CertiK: about $640,000, swapped for about 355.5 ETH. Revoke.cash: around $640,000 stolen, and about 354 ETH laundered through Tornado Cash.
Refund. Unibot's 31 October post, quoted by The Block and CoinDesk, said any funds lost to the bug would be compensated. Crypto Times quotes Unibot's 2 November post saying the exploit had been fully addressed and trading was back, and reports that Unibot spent $1.78 million covering about 600 wallets, mostly by buying tokens back, with ether paid where the token could not be bought. Revoke.cash reports the same cost, about $1.78 million, and the same buyback approach. We did not open Unibot's own posts, only these write-ups of them.
Sources. The Block, 31 October 2023. CoinDesk, 31 October 2023, which quotes PeckShield and Unibot. CertiK. Revoke.cash exploit note. Crypto Times, 4 November 2023, quoting Unibot's 2 November post.
On this site. Unibot check official links. Unibot is not in the tool directory. If you traded through that router, Revoke.cash still lists the approval as risky.
29 March 2024: Solareum, and keys exported from BONKbot
What happened. Solana wallets were drained. Many of the people affected had used BONKbot, a Telegram trading bot. BONKbot said its own bot was not the source. Decrypt quotes BONKbot: every affected BONKbot user had exported the bot wallet's private key, and BONKbot's logs pointed at those keys being imported into another app. A competing Telegram bot, Solareum, replied that there might be a chance it had been exploited, and also said other drained wallets had never touched Solareum (Decrypt and Cointelegraph). Cointelegraph quotes Solareum's later shutdown note: it was closing because of insufficient funds, market changes, and a recent security breach, and it told users to retrieve assets. It said it had contacted authorities in case the funds reached an exchange. It did not announce a refund.
In January 2025, DL News reported a 21 January court filing in which prosecutors said a developer a company had hired helped steal 6,045 SOL, about $1.4 million, from a Solana trading bot on 29 March 2024. The filing calls the victim "US Company 1". DL News, and Taylor Monahan of MetaMask, say the facts in the filing match Solareum. That identification is theirs, not a name in the filing. DL News also says the FBI seized about $950,000 in USDT, and that a Justice Department spokesperson did not say whether victims would be paid.
Estimated loss. Two reported totals. BONKbot's same-day count, in Decrypt: 302 victims, about 2,808 SOL, about $523,000, of which 113 victims had used BONKbot and all 113 had exported a key. Cointelegraph, citing that BONKbot analysis, says more than 2,800 SOL, around $520,000, and more than 300 users. The court filing, as reported by DL News: 6,045 SOL, about $1.4 million. The early public count and the later filing do not match. Both are left as reported.
Refund. No Solareum refund was announced in the shutdown notes Cointelegraph and Decrypt quote. BONKbot denied responsibility; Decrypt does not report a BONKbot refund. DL News says about $950,000 in USDT was seized and does not report a payout to users.
Sources. Decrypt, 29 March 2024, quoting BONKbot and Solareum. Cointelegraph, 2 April 2024, quoting Solareum's shutdown. DL News, 30 January 2025.
On this site. BONKbot check official links. Solareum is not listed.
19 September 2024: Banana Gun message oracle
What happened. Banana Gun users saw transfers they had not made. The team turned off its Ethereum and Solana bots. The Block quotes an early Banana Gun post: fewer than 10 users, transfers that looked manual, and a guess that the cause was a front-end bug. The back end, the team said then, was not compromised. On 25 September the team said a closer look found a possible flaw in the Telegram message oracle it uses, the piece that turns a Telegram message into an action the bot will sign. Cointelegraph describes the same finding: someone could move ETH out of wallets while those people were using the bot. The bots were turned back on after a patch. The Block says the new limits were a two-hour delay on transfers and two-factor authentication for transfers.
Estimated loss. Banana Gun's own later figure, quoted by The Block and Cointelegraph: 11 users and $3 million. Cointelegraph says earlier counting had suggested 36 users and nearly $2 million of ETH. The $3 million and the count of 11 are what the team stated, not an independent audit we opened.
Refund. Banana Gun said all 11 users would be fully refunded from the Banana Gun treasury, and that no tokens would be sold to pay for it (The Block and Cointelegraph, quoting the 25 September post). We did not find a later report, in the pages opened for this timeline, that confirms the payments were sent.
Sources. The Block, 25 September 2024. Cointelegraph, 25 September 2024.
On this site. Banana Gun check official links.
26 October 2026: Bloom third-party module
What happened. Bloom's own statement says an attacker used a remote code execution bug in a third-party module. Bloom says no private keys were accessed, and that it had ruled out a wider exposure of users' wallets. This is a bot-wallet incident, not a router-approval bug and not a message oracle. The live write-up, including a later same-day note, is on the incident tracker so it is not copied in full here.
Estimated loss. Bloom's post: 49 wallet addresses belonging to 9 users, about 9,408 SOL, which Bloom valued at $947,000.
Refund. That post says Bloom will fully reimburse 100% of the stolen funds to wallets the affected users designate. It is a promise in the statement we opened, not a receipt. The incident tracker records a later update the same day in which Bloom said the 9,408 SOL had been refunded.
Sources. Bloom on X, 26 October 2026. Incident tracker.
On this site. Bloom check official links. Bloom is not in the tool directory.
Patterns that show up more than once
Four mechanisms cover the cases above. They are descriptions of what the sources say happened, not a ranking of today's bots.
- Router approvals. Maestro (October 2023) and Unibot (October 2023). The bot's contract is allowed to move a token. A bug in that contract lets someone else use the allowance. The wallet key stays put. Old approvals can outlive the bug: Revoke.cash still warns about the Unibot router.
- The bot can see the private key. Solareum (March 2024) and the BONKbot users in that drain. The bot creates the wallet and can show the key. Exporting that key into a second bot moves the risk to the second bot. Bloom (October 2026) is the related case where the bot's own systems were the way in, and Bloom says the keys themselves were not stolen. Maestro, Banana Gun and BONKbot also document bot-held keys on their check pages.
- A spoofed command. Banana Gun (September 2024). The team said a flaw in the Telegram message oracle may have turned someone else's message into a signed transfer. The patch they described adds a delay and a second factor on transfers, which only helps if those controls are actually on.
- A clone, or a key pasted into the wrong app. The March 2024 drain is the sourced example: BONKbot said the affected users had exported keys, and Solareum was the bot those reports clustered on. Fake apps and lookalike sites are recorded on individual check pages, including Axiom, rather than given a loss figure here. Start from the official links page, not from a search ad, a DM or an app-store name.
What to check before you use a bot
- Open the bot from its official links page, which only lists a handle when that vendor's own site or docs included it. If the page says a handle is missing, use the check page and do not guess.
- Read the check page for that bot: who holds the key, whether the bot can send funds out, and the incidents already written up. Directory pages, where we list the bot, are linked from the timeline above (Maestro, Banana Gun, BONKbot).
- On Ethereum and other EVM chains, review token approvals and revoke ones you no longer use. Revoke.cash explains the steps in how to revoke token approvals, and keeps an exploit checker for the 2023 Unibot router.
- Do not import a wallet you use for savings, and do not paste an exported bot key into a second bot or a "support" chat. The March 2024 section is the sourced case of exported keys.
- Keep only the amount you are trading in a wallet the bot can sign for. If funds are already gone, follow what to do if a bot or wallet is drained.
What this page leaves out
The incident tracker is the list that can affect an Agent Risk Score, and only when an official source is added there. Nothing on this history page is fed into a score. Exchange API-key leaks, including the 3Commas cases, are a different mechanism: they are on the 3Commas check and on exchange API key safety. User reports that a vendor has not confirmed, such as the Sigma and Fomo notes on their check pages, are not treated as established incidents here.