Hackers who attacked Near Protocol’s Rainbow bridge lost a secure deposit of 5 ETH with the introduction of automated security processes.
The number of malicious people is growing to take advantage of several blockchain bridges, such as Nomad’s recent $200 million hack. This time, however, the hackers who aimed to trick Rainbow’s smart contracts into releasing locked funds without investing any initial funds by making fraudulent transactions were defeated.
Hackers Reveal Harmful From Near’s Attack on Rainbow Bridge
Rainbow developer Alex Shevchenko said on Twitter that an attacker is planning to attack the Rainbow bridge by placing a “safe deposit” of 5 ETH over the weekend.
Rainbow bridge attackers were matched by the bridge’s validators in less than 31 seconds with automated security processes kicking in. Rainbow’s validators automatically caught the fabricated block the attacker was trying to send, interrogated and blocked the transaction, and took the secure deposit of 5 ETH placed by the attacker.
https://twitter.com/AlexAuroraDev/status/1561692371833667585
The Rainbow bridge was able to successfully survive this attack because of the way it works. Being a completely decentralized platform, Rainbow works on Near blocks with validators called bridge relays that send block information to Ethereum.
By monitoring blockchain activity on all networks connected to Rainbow, validators agree on which transactions are genuine. Then, by observing the Near blockchain, independent “watchdogs” checking for data mismatches challenge, flag, and finally block incorrect transactions.
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