A new $112 million hacker hit has taken place on the decentralized finance platform Mango. The revelation was first made yesterday by the OtterSec auditor on Twitter.
Mango people said they have mobilized to freeze the stolen funds. Mango is a decentralized exchange based on Solana’s blockchain, which offers users the ability to make spot transactions and loans.
Although we are not even halfway through the month, October is shaping up to be the worst ever in cryptocurrencies in terms of hacker attacks. So far this month there have been 11 incidents, with a total loot of $718 million, according to research firm Chainalysis.
If breaches continue at this rate, this year is predicted to be the worst in terms of amounts stolen. So far, hackers have raked in over $3 billion in 125 hits.
Hackers prefer DeFi
The notable difference this year, compared to previous years, is that the attacks are targeting decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.
Previously, the target was mainly centralized exchanges. A trend which started last year. There is an explanation to this.
Large exchanges strengthened their defenses, making it more difficult to attack them, while DeFi, being weaker, were more vulnerable.
Most Vulnerable: Bridges
Most vulnerable of all remain bridges, which are applications that allow transfers of tokens from one blockchain to another. The Achilles heel of the decentralized economy ecosystem. This month alone 3 breaches have extracted $600 million worth of coins.
The big blow to Binance
The latest big hit was of course the attack on a bridge of the Binance exchange connected to the Binance Smart Chain. As far as it was found, BNB tokens worth hundreds of millions of dollars were stolen. The hacker managed to trick the BNB bridge to cut 2 million BNB tokens (over $580 million).
Once he acquired them, he tried to give them as collateral to borrow stablecoins from the Venus Protocol lending platform. This way he wouldn’t give up a target, as would happen if he put them up for sale. The plan partially succeeded. He was able to do it for $127 million worth of coins before the Binance people had a chance to shut down the chain, freezing the remaining funds.
A feature of the BNB network was highlighted on this occasion. It took only 26 validators to shut down the network for 8 hours. The question therefore arises whether a blockchain with 26 validators is truly decentralized. When very few can take it down, under any circumstances. We all know the answer of course.
This is not the only case. Most of the decentralized blockchains are decentralized only at the epigraph. This of course has not prevented BNB from growing and experiencing a great boom. As an example, when BNB was launched in 2017, it was 10 cents. Today it has almost $300 and was up to $550.
However, there is a pressing question as to whether bridges will survive being part of the crypto ecosystem. If cryptocurrencies are to be widely adopted, they will need to have secure and reliable systems for moving value. A role in which bridges have failed, though they do have utility.
Bridges are a vital component of the system. Unless a large blockchain like Ethereum’s eventually dominates. One of the big bets in the nascent and therefore exciting cryptocurrency space.
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