On September 26th, another heist in the crypto space occurred. While the amount of money stolen from the protocol was small compared to others ($2 million), the story took an unusual turn: The victimized protocol offered the hacker a job.
The pieces started moving when Web3 security firm Dedaub found an exploit in a smart contract of Bedrock, a multi-asset staking protocol. The exploit would allow an enterprising individual the ability to mint an unlimited amount of uniBTC, a synthetic asset commonly used on DeFi exchanges to represent Bitcoin.
Dedaub alerted Bedrock but the protocol’s team didn’t act quickly enough. The hacker, who has not identified themselves, stole $2 million, mostly from liquidity pools. The protocol made an announcement on X about the hack later in the day, explaining what happened and saying that all funds were SAFU. But then, Bedrock made an unusual play to recover the funds: a job offer.
The team took to Etherscan, a block explorer for the Ethereum chain, writing a message directly to the hacker: “…we would like to communicate with you inviting you to become a white hat for the recent incidence. Would you be interested in working with us and making the protocol more secure? And we are happy to work on a reward for your help.”
So far the hacker has not responded. Rarity Sniper will keep an eye on this story and update this article if there are any further developments.
Frauds and Hacks Mar Crypto Space in 2023
The crypto space has seen a boom since the crash in 2022, with many predicting a big three months to close out 2024. But it’s not just world governments and Crypto X denizens that are taking notice of the money flowing in Web3: thieves are as well.
According to a report from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), there were more than 69,000 complaints submitted to the Bureau for cryptocurrency fraud. Those incidents resulted in losses of $5.6 billion. Although the number of complaints account for just 10% of total complaints, the amount of money lost corresponds to 50%.
Of course, fraud and hacks aren’t necessarily the same thing. But the hacks haven’t been particularly better either. According to Blockworks, the top five hacks in 2023 amounted to $749 million stolen. Here is the rundown of the victims and the losses:
- Mixin Network ($200 million)
- Euler Finance ($197 million)
- Poloniex ($126 million)
- Multichain ($126 million)
- Atomic Wallet ($100 million)
There’s no word about how much money the companies recovered from these hacks, if any. But it goes to show that safety in the crypto space is a top priority.
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