DAO behind CoW Swap urges users to stay off platform after ‘hijacking‘

Decentralized exchange aggregator CoW Swap is calling on users to refrain from using its website after an unknown party hijacked its domain.

In a Tuesday X post, the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) behind CoW Swap said its website had experienced a “DNS [Domain Name System] hijacking,” leading to a pause of its backend and APIs. The frontend exploit, through the website http://swap.cow.fi, was ongoing at the time of publication.

“We are now actively working to resolve the situation,” said CoW Swap. “Please continue to refrain from using swap dot cow dot fi until we confirm that it is safe to use.”

DNS attacks like the one CoW Swap reported are not uncommon among crypto and blockchain companies where user funds are at risk from phishing attempts. Decentralized exchange Balancer reported a domain attack in 2023, while Curve Finance said it has experienced multiple DNS hijackings.

Related: Firestorm erupts in Aave governance forum over CoW Swap fees

The price of the CoW Protocol’s COW token dropped more than 3% amid news of the domain hijacking, to $0.2159 from $0.2229.

Web3 hacks, driven by phishing, resulted in a half billion dollars in losses in Q1 2026

Blockchain security company Hacken reported on Tuesday that Web3 projects lost $482 million to hacks and scams in the first quarter of 2026. According to Hacken, there were 44 incidents over Q1 2026, most of which were phishing and social engineering attacks.

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