Juno (JUNO), a Cosmos-based altcoin, went offline as a result of a suspected attack on the network. According to a retweet from the project’s official Twitter account, the network has been offline at the time of writing, but no user funding has been affected, and the Juno core development team says the network will be fixed soon. Here are the details…
Attacker exploited Blockchain vulnerability
A Juno core developer said the network crash was caused by a malicious smart contract masquerading as a simple program. The suspected attacker sent a string of more than 400 transactions to the smart contract over three days during a period of apparent trial and error, eventually arriving at a particular combination of transactions that crashed the network. According to the developer, the attacker exploited a blockchain vulnerability that Juno plans to address through an update scheduled for a few hours after the attack. The developer said the vulnerability was publicly disclosed as it affects all blockchains using the CosmWasm smart contract platform.
This is the second major challenge Juno has faced recently. As cryptokoin.com reported, a controversial management vote in March resulted in the tokens being taken away from a “whale” accused of manipulating a JUNO airdrop. This was described by the cryptocurrency community as “an unprecedented case of a decentralized community voting directly to cut a wallet’s token balance.”
Altcoin JUNO price drops
As of now, the identity of the attacker is unknown. Meanwhile, the JUNO token, which has a market cap of $1 billion according to CoinGecko, has dropped from $23.44 to $21.55 in the last 24 hours. The dips were deeper on Tuesday, when the attack emerged, from the $27.87 lows to $21 as seen in the 7-day chart below.
According to Daniel Hwang, head of protocols at Stakefish, who runs a validator for Juno, members of the Juno community have been skeptical of who, and with what motivation, to carry out the attack without any financial gain. He’s trying to find out what he might have done. According to Hwang, token holders point to many potential criminals, from rival Blockchain to wallet holders who lost at the end of last month’s management vote.
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