Important facts:
-
Exactly owned more than $36 million at the time of the attack.
-
The Exactly protocol has been paused, but the timing of its reactivation has already been announced.
The attack on a bridge by Optimism, a second-tier Ethereum solution, drained the equivalent of $7.1 million worth of Exactly Ether (ETH) from the lending platform.
The 4,323.6 Ether, a native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, was extracted due to a vulnerability in an Exactly smart contract. This comes from data from the security company De.Fi in the social network X.
Has alerted its users to the exact security issue they are facing. At the same time, they claimed that they could withdraw their assets even if the protocol was paused.
Hours later, Exactly reported that they were planning an update to fix the vulnerability who have presented one of their contracts but have not provided any information on the actual problem. A few hours ago they confirmed that the reactivation of the protocol and all its features would take effect today, Saturday, August 19 at 23:51 UTC.
That is exactly what happened sent the attacker a message via the Ethereum network, in block 17944083 of its ledger (blockchain). It should be noted that the identity of the hacker is currently unknown and no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Despite the Optimism Bridge attack, its OP token was unaffected in the cryptocurrency market. Actually in the last 24 hours shows an increase of 2.4%in contrast to the general market trend, which is bearish after Bitcoin (BTC) price fell.
The insecurity of bridges in cryptocurrency networks
Bridges are protocols that facilitate the transfer of value between cryptocurrency networks and second-layer solutions like rollups and sidechains. The bridges use smart contracts where the cryptocurrencies or tokens sent from one network to another are protected. The makes them an attractive target for hackers.
The last year (2022) has been one of the worst in terms of cyber attacks on DeFi bridges and protocols. Among the most serious is the attack on the bridge connecting the Ronin network to Ethereum.
CriptoNoticias reported that the hackers extracted 174,000 ETH from this project, which was more than $540 million for the price of Ether at the time. Ronin is an Ethereum sidechain developed by Sky Mavis company, the developers of the popular non-fungible tokens (NFT) game Axie Infinity.