7 DeFi protocol hacks in Feb sees $21 million in funds pilfered: DefiLlama

by Jeremy

Reentrancy, worth oracle assaults and exploits throughout seven protocols induced decentralized finance (DeFi) house to bleed not less than $21 million in crypto in February. 

In accordance to DeFi-centric knowledge analytics platform DefiLlama, one of many largest within the month was the flash mortgage reentrancy assault on Platypus Finance, which led to $8.5 million of funds misplaced.

DefiLlama highlighted six different noteworthy hacks within the month, the primary being the worth oracle assault on BonqDAO on Feb 1.

DeFi platforms suffered seven assaults all through February. Supply: DefiLlama

BonqDAO: $1.7 million

BonqDAO revealed to its followers in a Feb. 1 submit that its Bonq protocol was uncovered to an oracle assault that allowed the exploiter to govern the worth of the AllianceBlock (ALBT) token.

The exploiter elevated the ALBT worth and minted massive quantities of BEUR. The BEUR was then swapped for different tokens on Uniswap. Then, the worth was decreased to nearly zero, which triggered the liquidation of ALBT troves.

Blockchain safety agency PeckShield estimated the losses to be round $120 million, nevertheless, it was later revealed hackers reportedly solely cashed out round $1 million as a consequence of an absence of liquidity on BonqDAO.

Orion Protocol: $3 million

Only a day later, decentralized alternate Orion Protocol suffered a loss of roughly $3 million on Feb. 2 via a reentrancy assault, the place attackers used a malicious good contract to empty funds from a goal with repeated withdrawal orders.

Orion Protocol CEO Alexey Koloskov confirmed the assault on the time, assuring everybody, “All customers’ funds are protected and safe.”

“Now we have causes to imagine that the problem was not a results of any shortcomings in our core protocol code, however relatively might need been brought on by a vulnerability in mixing third-party libraries in one of many good contracts utilized by our experimental and personal brokers,” he mentioned.

dForce Community: $3.65 million

DeFi protocol dForce community was one other February sufferer of a reentrancy assault leading to losses of round $3.65 million.

In a Feb. 10 submit, dForce confirmed the exploit; nevertheless in a twist, all funds had been returned when the hacker got here ahead as a whitehat hacker.

“On Feb. 13, 2023, the exploited funds had been absolutely returned to our multi-sig on each Arbitrum and Optimism, an ideal ending for all,” dForce mentioned.

Platypus Finance: $9.1 million

On Feb. 16, DeFi protocol Platypus Finance suffered a flash mortgage assault leading to $8.5 million being drained from the protocol.

A autopsy report from Platypus auditor Omniscia famous that the assault was doable due to code within the flawed order.

On Feb. 23, the crew introduced that they’re in search of to return round 78% of the primary pool funds by reminting frozen stablecoins.

The crew additionally confirmed second and third incidents, which led to a different $667,000 exploited, bringing whole losses of round $9.1 million.

French police arrested two suspects associated to the hack and seized round $222,000 value of crypto belongings on Feb. 25.

Hope Finance: $1.86 million

A number of days later, customers of arbitrum-based algorithmic stablecoin undertaking, Hope Finance, fell prey to a sensible contract exploit on Feb. 20, which noticed roughly $2 million stolen from customers.

Web3 safety agency CertiK flagged the incident on Feb. 21, following an announcement from the Hope Finance Twitter account notifying customers of the rip-off.

A member of the CertiK crew advised Cointelegraph on the time that the scammer had modified the small print of the good contract, which led to funds being drained from Hope Finance genesis protocol:

“It seems that the scammer modified the TradingHelper contract which meant that when 0x4481 calls OpenTrade on the GenesisRewardPool the funds are transferred to the scammer.”

Dexible: $2 million

Multichain alternate aggregator Dexible was hit by an exploit that focused the app’s selfSwap perform, with $2 million value of cryptocurrency was misplaced because of the Feb. 17 assault.

Based on a Feb. 18 submit from the alternate, “a hacker exploited a vulnerability in our latest good contract. This allowed the hacker to steal funds from any pockets that had an unspent spend approval on the contract.”

After investigating, the Dexible crew discovered that an attacker had used the app’s selfSwap perform to maneuver over $2 million value of crypto from customers that had beforehand approved the app to maneuver their tokens.

After receiving the tokens into their very own good contract, the attacker withdrew the cash via Twister Money into unknown BNB wallets.

LaunchZone: $700,000

BNB Chain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol LaunchZone had $700,000 value of funds drained on Feb. 27.

In accordance to blockchain safety agency Immunefi, an attacker leveraged an unverified contract to empty the funds.

“An approval had been made to the unverified contract 473 days in the past by the LaunchZone deployer,” Immunefi mentioned.

Associated: Crypto exploit losses in January see practically 93% year-on-year decline

The February figures are a stark improve from January, in line with DefiLlama figures.

The tracker lists solely $740,000 in hacks to DeFi platforms within the month throughout two protocols — Midas Capital and ROE Finance.

In its 2023 Crypto Crime Report, blockchain knowledge agency Chainalysis revealed that hackers stole $3.1 billion from DeFi protocols in 2022l, accounting for greater than 82% of the whole quantity stolen within the 12 months.