Actionability as the Core Function of Crypto Threat Intelligence
written by: Tiago Assumpcao
Threat intelligence turns raw data about adversaries, vulnerabilities, and attacks into insight that helps organizations make better security decisions. But intelligence only creates value when it can be acted on.
Actionability is what bridges analysis and outcomes. It is the difference between knowing something happened and being able to change what happens next. It enables concrete decisions: prioritizing risks, allocating resources, modifying controls, freezing assets, warning users, or preventing a threat from materializing in the first place. Without actionability, threat intelligence remains informational. With it, intelligence becomes operational.
In that sense, actionability is not an add-on to threat intelligence. It is the core function that determines whether intelligence actually improves security.
When Traditional Cybersecurity Models Break Down
In traditional cybersecurity, attacks often unfold over hours, days, or even weeks. Campaigns follow recognizable patterns, commonly described as tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and leave behind indicators of compromise (IOCs) such as IP addresses, domains, hashes, or malware signatures. These indicators allow defenders to detect attacks in progress, stop ongoing campaigns, and prevent follow-on waves.
Crypto does not operate on that timeline.
In a matter of seconds, smart contracts controlling critical business logic can be exploited, bridges can be drained, and tokenized assets can be irreversibly transferred. There is no rollback. No quarantine. No “restore from backup.” Minutes — or even seconds — can represent millions of dollars lost.
This reality fundamentally changes what actionability means in the crypto ecosystem. Identifying and stopping an attack while it is underway is extraordinarily difficult. Identifying an imminent attack and acting before the attacker is even harder. Yet this is precisely the problem crypto threat intelligence must solve.
Since joining Crypto ISAC, much of my work has focused on answering a deceptively simple question: what does actionability actually mean in crypto — in terms of data, engineering, and ecosystem coordination? What follows is how we have been building the pillars for actionability by stacking complementary capabilities, prioritizing data quality, and shifting crypto threat intelligence from reactive to preventive.
Actionability Depends on Who You Are
Not all crypto organizations are the same, and actionability is highly context-dependent.
Centralized exchanges, stablecoin issuers, wallet providers, DeFi protocols, and layer-1 and layer-2 networks all play different roles in the ecosystem. They operate under different technical architectures, legal frameworks, internal processes, and risk tolerances. As a result, the same piece of threat intelligence may be actionable for one organization and unusable for another.
Understanding these constraints was a critical first step. Before deciding what data to share, we had to understand when organizations could act on intelligence and how they could do so. Only then could we begin mapping specific data types to concrete actions across industry verticals.
The Data That Enables Action
Actionable crypto threat intelligence is built on multiple classes of data, each enabling different forms of response:
Wallet addresses associated with malicious activity in the past
Transaction hashes tied to exploits, illicit transfers, or laundering activity
Smart contract addresses used to execute attacks or exfiltrate funds
Smart contracts that contain exploit logic but have not yet been used
Transaction simulation states that reveal exploit behavior before execution
No single data source covers all attack surfaces. Increasing the scope of actionability requires integrating providers with different detection models, visibility, and strengths.
Why Data Quality Matters More Than Data Volume
Having access to the “right” data is not enough. The data must be trustworthy.
On-chain monitoring systems vary widely in how they detect malicious activity. Some rely heavily on heuristics. Others on pattern matching, behavioral analysis, or statistical models. False positives are unavoidable, particularly when detection systems prioritize speed. Many tools attempt to address this by assigning confidence scores, but those scores only matter if recipients understand how they are produced.
A significant portion of our work has focused on understanding how data is generated and how it is vetted by each provider. Once we understand the underlying analytics and validation processes, we can communicate confidence levels clearly and consistently to our members. This allows organizations to calibrate their response — from passive monitoring to immediate action — based on risk and certainty.
Data quality is not just about analytical rigor. It is also about operational validation.
A strong example of this is Crypto ISAC’s recent integration with Coinbase, which is now sharing high-confidence threat intelligence derived directly from its Trust & Safety operations. The shared data consists of crypto addresses associated with account takeover (ATO) or scam activity, identified through Coinbase’s internal fraud detection and review processes.
Each address meets strict high-confidence criteria: either it has received illicit funds from multiple victims, or it has been independently confirmed by multiple trained reviewers. In all cases, these addresses were already blocked through Coinbase’s internal fraud prevention systems before being shared.
This level of validation fundamentally changes how intelligence can be acted upon. For recipients, these signals are not speculative indicators or untested heuristics — they are operationally enforced conclusions. As a result, members can respond faster and more decisively, with confidence that the intelligence reflects real-world abuse that has already been confirmed and acted upon.
In an ecosystem where false positives carry real operational and user-impact costs, high-confidence, well-vetted intelligence is what enables actionability at scale.
From Reactive to Preventive Intelligence
In crypto, speed alone is not enough.
Even the fastest alert about an exploit that has already happened may arrive too late to protect the first victim. High-confidence, high-quality data still leaves a gap if intelligence is purely reactive.
To reduce systemic risk, threat intelligence must do two things:
Detect attacks as early as possible.
Propagate intelligence fast enough — and across enough surfaces — to prevent reuse of the same techniques against other targets.
No single dataset or detection model can achieve this on its own. Increasing actionability requires expanding scope — across blockchains, execution environments, attack types, and points in time. This is why Crypto ISAC works with complementary partners, each selected for distinct strategic and technological strengths that enable different forms of action.
Partners such as Cube3 and Web3 Firewall extend actionability in near real time by detecting active exploitation events across multiple networks and attack categories. Their signals enable rapid warnings, blocking, and risk mitigation when malicious infrastructure, contracts, or addresses are already in use. This form of actionability, while often after-the-fact, is critical to preventing rapid reuse of the same techniques against other protocols and users.
Preventive actionability requires pushing intelligence even further upstream. Bitfinding provides this capability by monitoring newly deployed smart contracts, identifying exploit patterns in bytecode, and attempting to trigger the attack locally by fuzzing call data and validating outcomes. In some cases, this enables the identification of imminent attacks before execution, creating narrow but decisive windows where losses can be prevented rather than merely contained.
Actionability must also extend beyond on-chain activity. Phishing and web-based scams remain one of the most effective attack vectors in crypto. Chain Patrol complements on-chain intelligence by monitoring the internet for crypto-related fake domains and phishing websites that host malware or wallet drainers, enabling early user warnings and takedowns before an on-chain interaction ever occurs.
CloudBurst adds off-chain intelligence from the deep web, identifying early signals of scams, fraud, and coordinated activity across social networks and private chat groups.
Together, these complementary capabilities allow Crypto ISAC to move threat intelligence upstream — from documenting losses to actively changing outcomes. Near-real-time detection reduces blast radius. Preventive contract analysis disrupts attacks before execution. Web-based intelligence blocks compromise at the earliest possible stage.
And this is not theoretical.
In practice, this expanded actionability scope has already delivered measurable impact:
Cube3 enabled Crypto ISAC to recently detect over $3M in token rebalancing attacks on BASE in near real time.
Web3 Firewall has expanded detection into new attack categories and non-EVM networks, increasing coverage where traditional tooling falls short.
Bitfinding prevented approximately $1M in losses during the Balancer attack, and identified an early-stage window that could have prevented an additional $70M from being stolen with the right resources in place.
Chain Patrol delivers 500+ validated alerts per day on scam websites and high-profile wallet drainers, enabling actionability through web2 controls before users ever sign a transaction.
This is what it means to move from reactive to preventive crypto threat intelligence — not by relying on a single feed or tool, but by deliberately stacking complementary capabilities that expand where, when, and how intelligence can be acted upon.
Actionability Across Industry Verticals
The practical impact of threat intelligence depends on the actions it enables. Across the crypto ecosystem, actionable intelligence supports a wide range of defensive measures:
Asset protection: freezing funds, blocking bridge transfers, or preventing interactions with malicious contracts
User protection: frontend warnings, transaction alerts, and signature risk indicators
Operational security: preventing threat actor infiltration through hiring processes or social engineering
Compliance and enforcement: identifying laundering activity, enriching AML workflows, and supporting law enforcement investigations
Different verticals act on different signals. Exchanges and stablecoin issuers can freeze funds and disrupt laundering. Wallet providers and DeFi protocols can warn users in real time and block known malicious contracts. Networks can intervene at infrastructure layers such as bridges or validators. Even web-based intelligence — phishing domains, fake applications, or scam infrastructure — plays a critical role in protecting crypto users before they ever reach an on-chain interaction.
What matters is not just sharing data, but sharing the right data with the right context so that organizations can act decisively.
Building a Broad-Scope Actionability Machine
Crypto ISAC’s approach to actionability is intentionally layered. Members continuously share intelligence derived from real-world incidents, while partners contribute complementary detection capabilities.
This diversity of inputs allows us to:
Detect attacks across multiple blockchains and execution environments
Identify patterns that repeat across victims, chains, and protocols
Translate intelligence into concrete, time-sensitive actions
Reduce systemic risk rather than simply documenting losses
Threat intelligence, in this model, is not a static feed. It is a living system designed to shorten the distance between detection and defense.
Actionability Is a Discipline, Not a Feature
Actionability does not come from a single tool, feed, or dataset. It emerges from aligning data quality, confidence, speed, and organizational capability. In crypto, where attacks unfold at machine speed and losses are irreversible, this alignment is not optional.
The future of crypto threat intelligence is not just faster alerts or bigger datasets. It is intelligence that arrives early enough, with enough confidence, and in the right form to change outcomes.
That is the problem we are solving — and the direction we believe the ecosystem must move.
Tiago Assumpcao is Technical Director at Crypto ISAC, where he leads efforts in threat intelligence engineering and collaborative defense to strengthen trust and security across the crypto ecosystem.
About Crypto ISAC
The Crypto ISAC is a member-driven, not-for-profit organization that works together to curb malicious actors, address vulnerabilities, share intelligence, and move security forward to protect the crypto ecosystem. We are founded by leading crypto organizations and designed for cryptosecurity experts to address the security and trust challenges that face crypto today and shape the crypto ecosystem of tomorrow.
