Ronin Bridge Hacked for $12 Million and Resumed
Date: 2024-08-08 Author: Oliver Abernathy Categories: BUSINESS
Ronin, one of the leading cross-chain transfer services, has been temporarily suspended after white hat hackers withdrew $12 million worth of tokens from the platform. Refund negotiations are currently underway.
Ronin was suspended on Tuesday after a potential vulnerability was reported. The white hat hackers who discovered the vulnerability notified the developers, and the bridge was suspended 40 minutes after the first activity on the blockchain was detected. The announcement was made on the X network by the Ronin Network team.
"Today's bridge upgrade, implemented through governance, introduced an error that caused the bridge to misinterpret the required threshold of bridge operator votes for withdrawals," the statement read. The hack resulted in the withdrawal of 4,000 Ether (ETH), worth about $9.8 million at current prices, and $2 million in USDC. Ronin developers are negotiating with the hackers to return the funds.
White hat hackers are specialists who look for vulnerabilities in software in order to fix them before they can be exploited by attackers. Bridges like Ronin are used to transfer tokens between different blockchains where the tokens are not natively supported.
The Ronin network was previously attacked in 2022, when a hacker used compromised private keys to forge withdrawals worth $625 million. The incident was one of the largest in decentralized finance (DeFi).
Ronin co-founder @Psycheout86 assured in a post on the X network that the remaining funds, worth over $850 million, were safe.
The process of resuming the bridge has already begun after its temporary suspension caused by this incident. The developers are actively working to eliminate the vulnerabilities found and improve the platform's security to avoid similar incidents in the future.
Due to the incident, network users are concerned about the safety of their funds. The developers assure that all necessary measures are being taken to protect users' assets and prevent such situations from recurring. The DeFi community is closely monitoring the developments and hopes for a speedy resolution of the situation.
Thus, despite the seriousness of the incident, the prompt actions of the Ronin team and cooperation with white hat hackers demonstrate a high level of responsibility and commitment to improving security in the field of decentralized finance.
