More than $100 million was stolen from a cryptocurrency trading site called Mango Markets when a threat actor executed a flash loan attack against the platform. Researchers believe this incident is one of the biggest crypto thefts in the digital asset scene today.
On October 12, Mango Markets shared on their Twitter account that a hacker had drained a significant amount of funds from the platform through price manipulation. For incident mitigation, the platform has disabled deposits temporarily and asked their third-party partners to freeze the stolen assets. Moreover, the hackers were also offered a bug bounty in exchange for returning the amount they had stolen.
Based on the platform’s investigation of the incident, the unknown hackers used two accounts to falsely raise the price of the MNGO coin to up to ten times its original price, completed within only a few minutes. Manipulating the MNGO coin’s value allowed the hackers to borrow and withdraw Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies available within Mango Markets.
The flash loan attack incident on Mango Markets prohibited other investors from withdrawing assets.
Because the hackers drained all available equity that circulates on the platform, all investors and customers could not withdraw their assets. Mango Markets also stated that the entities responsible for the incident have tried to negotiate with them, which involves a proposal that they will return most of the stolen funds to repay users who suffered from loss and also receive a bug bounty from the platform’s insurance fund.
Suppose the proposal from the hackers is granted. In that case, all Mango token holders agree to pay them the bounty, waive all claims against account holders with bad debts, and the firm will not pursue criminal investigations or freeze the hackers’ returned funds.
On the other hand, the cryptocurrency platform has yet to comment on whether it agreed to this proposal. Researchers believe the firm is still deliberating about its decision as its insurance fund is at stake to cover only a portion of the losses.
Other crypto platforms have also suffered from cyberattacks this year, including Binance, the world’s largest digital asset platform, losing over $100 million to unknown hackers. A blockchain company ‘Harmony’ has also reported a loss of $100 million of crypto funds because of a hack last June.
These incidents imply that cryptocurrency investors must be prepared for all risks and possibilities of asset loss within the sector. For the affected platforms, it is advised to enhance their security measures more, as the recent attacks and asset losses show that the existing measures are inadequate to secure people’s funds.
