In a 2021 full of stock market records, rising cryptocurrency prices and a wide variety of security threats, March is renowned for becoming the month with the highest losses in history due to cryptocurrency exploits, recording an estimated of $211.5m in stolen assets. Behind this statistic, there are malicious operators that continue to find vulnerable flaws in blockchain technology, being one of them the attack which recently affected the multi-chain token bridge Allbridge, causing a total of $573,000 drained from its liquidity pools.

To try to mitigate the impact of the attack, Allbridge has released an official statement offering a chance to the malicious entity to come forward as a white hat and claiming an undisclosed bounty, as consequence of returning the funds with no legal repercussions. Through its official channels, Twitter and Telegram, they also invited the attacker to send a message through Tx, so they could discuss the details of the offer.

However, it seems the hacker is not responding. Allbridge has not given up trying to recover the funds and its “partners and community” are actively tracking the hacker over social media, in addition of working with law firms, law enforcement and other projects affected. In order to prevent similar hacks and make sure no one else can use the same vulnerability, its bridge protocol has been temporarily suspended while they assess and repair the bug, also deploying a web interface allowing liquidity providers to withdraw assets.

Meanwhile, blockchain security firm CertiK offered its insights as a conclusion to the series of events. It was determined that the flashloan attack was used by the malicious operator, exploiting a $7.5 million BUSD loan to manipulate the prices in the Allbridge liquidity pools, enabling them to swap $40,000 of BUSD for $789,632 USDT.

All in all, investors must take into account cryptocurrencies can be incredibly tedious to secure. Even though Allbridge is working hard to resolve this incident, the wide amount of exploits and losses encountered along 2021 is an alarming warning that proper security protocols must be implemented in every step of the way. The blockchain world will keep being a honeypot for malicious operators unless these traps are avoided.



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