Fantom Basis awards $1.7M bounty for stopping $170M drain

by Jeremy

The Fantom Basis, a nonprofit group growing the Fantom blockchain platform, has eradicated a major vulnerability after a $550,000 hack in October.

On Oct. 17, the Fantom Basis suffered a scorching pockets hack, with an unknown attacker draining 1% of Fantom Basis’s funds. The muse subsequently stopped utilizing a number of the affected wallets, reassigning them to a Fantom worker, making it a “focused assault.”

Following the incident, an unnamed safety researcher discovered a further potential danger related to the hack and alerted the Fantom Basis, in keeping with a weblog publish on Nov. 20. The vulnerability was related to a dormant admin token for Fantom’s ERC-20 FTM contract, which may doubtlessly enable the attacker the flexibility to mint a portion of Fantom (FTM) for themselves on Ethereum.

In line with the Fantom Basis, the found vulnerability may have allowed the hacker to empty $170 million utilizing the pockets entry. The group stated the worth of the potential loss relies on the token value on the time of the hack, “although this estimate doesn’t think about the market’s inadequate liquidity to soak up the tokens totally.”

The Fantom Basis stated that the vulnerability was “mitigated rapidly,” and the group awarded the unnamed researcher $1.7 million in recognition of the contribution. The announcement added:

“The Fantom Basis is devoted to upholding the best safety requirements for our platform, and we stay grateful for the safety researchers who contribute to this effort.”

The Fantom Basis didn’t instantly reply to Cointelegraph’s request for remark.

Associated: Poloniex says hacker’s id is confirmed, affords final bounty at $10M

Regardless of the Fantom Basis dropping half 1,000,000 to a hack one month in the past, the Fantom token has risen over the previous 4 weeks. The token has added 82% of worth since Oct. 17, buying and selling at $0.31 on the time of writing, in keeping with CoinGecko. The token can also be up 78% over the previous 12 months, in keeping with the information.

Fantom (FTM) token 90-day value chart. Supply: CoinGecko

Launched in late 2019, the Fantom community is a blockchain protocol that allows customers to construct and deploy decentralized purposes (DApps). The Fantom Basis’s Opera is a permissionless blockchain appropriate with the Ethereum Digital Machine, which permits customers to work together with the Fantom community on MetaMask, a number one self-custodial cryptocurrency pockets.

Fantom’s current $550,000 hack isn’t the primary assault on the Fantom Basis or its customers. In July 2023, Fantom suffered an enormous multichain bridge hack, which resulted within the lack of $126 million value of cryptocurrency. Fantom creator Andre Cronje subsequently claimed that the Fantom crew was misled concerning the precise safety degree of Multichain, which ceased operations in mid-July 2023.

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