...and is definitely not an enormous grift that's pouring lighter fluid on our already smoldering planet.
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Someone intending to transfer Tether stablecoins amounting to $20 million apparently didn't think it was important to double-check the address, and fell for such an attack.
However, only 51 minutes after the theft, the victim had managed to get Tether to add the thief's address to its blacklist, freezing the assets and thwarting the attack. The rapidity of the freeze led various people to question who the victim might be who could get Tether to intervene so quickly.
A pseudonymous crypto user called "Bald" announced that they would be selling $BALD tokens on the Base network, and the token — apparently named after the hairless Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong — quickly skyrocketed in price. However, the token deployer emptied tokens priced at around $25.6 million from the liquidity pool two days after launch in apparent rug pull. The token price quickly plunged by around 90%.
Conspiracy theories emerged that the Bald account was in fact operated by Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX who is on house arrest under strict supervision and without access to most websites as he awaits trial later this year.
In addition to the unregistered offerings charge, the SEC alleges Heart and PulseChain misappropriated $12.1 million to fund Heart's lavish lifestyle. Among other things, he purchased a McLaren sports car, five luxury watches, and a $4.3 million 555-carat black diamond called "Enigma", allegedly using funds from the sale.
Curve itself lost $61 million to the exploit. AlchemixFi was exploited for around $13 million in assets, and JPEG'd suffered a $11 million loss. MetronomeDAO suffered a $1.6 million loss, Ellipsis Finance lost $68,600, and Debridge Finance lost around $24,600.
Altogether, somewhere between $88 million and $100 million was taken, though some exploits appeared to be whitehat actions intended to preserve funds. The primary exploiter also later returned some of the stolen funds, refunding the entire amount to AlchemixFi and 90% of funds to JPEG'd in exchange for a 10% "bug bounty".
Blockchain security firm SolidProof had audited Kannagi in June.
However, serious flaws in the Pond0x contract resulted in traders losing at least $2.2 million as people discovered that anyone could transfer coins belonging to other people. People quickly began rushing to steal coins from one another.
Pauly0x responded by blaming the traders who bought and sold the tokens, and spent the following day variously posting on Twitter that he was teaching people a lesson, that it wasn't his fault that people lost money, and suggesting that the flaw was part of a bigger plan for the project. "No one stole your tokens lol. The contract is literally designed as such," he wrote to angry traders accusing him of a rug pull. He added to the website a message reading, "GREED KILLS".
withdrawFunds function to make off with the project's assets.DeFiLabs claimed on Twitter that the platform "encountered an unexpected issue" while "undergoing maintenance and updates".
DeFiLabs had been audited by blockchain security firm CertiK.
After prominent Bitcoiner Jameson Lopp tweeted that the issue "look[s] more like a hack", CoinsPaid replied "Our team is aware of the issue... Please wait for the official announcement on this topic." Crypto researcher zachxbt responded, "The issue is you got hacked by North Korea that's what lol", referencing the increasing suspicion that the Lazarus group may be behind the disruption. Sure enough, CoinsPaid later confirmed that they had been hacked for $37.3 million, and announced that they suspected the Lazarus Group was behind it.
Some have been speculating that there are connections between this incident and the $60 million hack of the Alphapo crypto payments processor on July 22. Alphapo also provided services to various online casinos. Indeed, there seem to be connections between Alphapo and CoinsPaid, and they may in fact be operated by the same people.
EraLend paused various functions of their protocol while they investigated the attack, and said they were working with various security research organizations and law enforcement to investigate the theft.
The BlockSec security research firm warned other projects that re-used a portion of code to be cautious if they re-used a portion of code from SyncSwap, because they could also be vulnerable.
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