Crypto Hackers Drain Over $36M From Protocols Using Unverified Contracts
A crypto hacker who drained $26 million from Ethereum-based protocol Truebit in January had likely practiced the technique on smaller targets first, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. Related Reading: The Bitcoin Rally Has A Problem: Demand Is Drying Up A Contract Left Exposed For Years The Truebit exploit was the largest of four incidents Chainalysis identified in a new report covering the past six months. Together, those attacks — targeting Truebit, Trusted Volumes, Aperture Finance, and Ekubo — account for roughly $37 million in losses, all traced back to contracts whose source code had never been publicly verified on blockchain explorers. The Truebit contract had been sitting on Ethereum since 2021. It was compiled using Solidity v0.5.3, a version released before automatic overflow protections became standard. An attacker found an integer overflow flaw inside its bonding curve mechanism and used it to mint large quantities of tokens at minimal cost before convertin