tDOT, the synthetic token of Acala Network, fell victim to the $106,000 hack attack. A hacker manipulated the smart contract, spawning and dumping thousands of new altcoins. The price is currently gaining bearish momentum.
Acala Network witnessed $106,000 hack attack
A professional security expert known as 0xTaysama reported that Acala Network’s tDOT token has been exploited. The hacking took place via NUTS Finance, which minted tDOT and then exchanged it for approximately 18,000 DOT, equivalent to $106,000 at the current market rate.
The security expert shared the autopsy report along with a screenshot of the circulating tDOT supply. 0xTaysama stated that the team became aware of the attack about six and a half hours ago.
The Acala Network team had created a proposal to pause StableAsset swaps. Despite this, the Blockchain could not be paused or the transfers blocked, according to analysis by 0xTaysama. However, the security analyst says the team will take appropriate action to repair the situation using management actions.
The attack was not widely effective, as the attacker did not leak the DOT from the Acala network. There are suspicions that this could be a white hack and the attacker will return the money to the team or that the team will perform a force transfer to restore the network state before the hack.
How have altcoin prices reacted?
There was no significant drop in price, as hackers did not leak the exploited DOT from the Acala network. The bad news is that a hefty amount of tDOT tokens have been airdropped into 18,000 DOTs. At the time of the news, Polkadot (DOT), which is ranked 11th by market capitalization, is down more than 2%. The ACA price also lost value at a similar rate.
Amount lost due to altcoin attacks in Q1 2023
Blockchain security experts reported that a total of $438 million worth of altcoins were stolen in the first quarter of 2023. This amount represents a 23% increase over the previous quarter’s volume of $1.9 billion. According to the report, the most targeted exchange in the first quarter of the year was DragonEx with a share of 24%. Binance, on the other hand, took second place with a slice of 13%.
Altcoin investors were also affected by the attacks. The report shows that $122 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from users’ personal wallets in the first quarter. This marks a 49% decrease compared to the last quarter of 2022.
In turn, DeFi platforms faced an increased security risk. The total value of thefts on DeFi platforms fell to $241 million in the first quarter, compared to $418 million recorded in the last quarter of 2022.
Finally, the report revealed that ransomware attacks are also on the rise. Companies have faced attacks that demand that customers pay with cryptocurrencies. Such attacks resulted in a loss of $41 million in the first quarter.
Ordinals Finance performed exit scam
In another hacking news of the day we quoted as Kriptokoin.com, it was reported that Ordinals Finance escaped with a total of 269 million OFI tokens worth $1 million.