Hackers Steal Virtual Coins By Exploiting Software Bug

Share post:

MonoX has confirmed a breach in which hackers squandered $31 million in virtual coins by exploiting a flaw in the company’s software used to create smart contracts.

According to MonoX finance, an accounting error gave access to hackers who inflate the price of the blockchain startup’s MONO token and then use it to pay out other deposited tokens.

On MonoX, tokens are exchanged using tokenIn (token sent by a user) and tokenOut (token received by a user). As soon as a token is exchanged, the price of tokenIn decreases while the price of tokenOut increases.

By using the same tokenIn and TokenOut, the attackers could inflate the price of the MONO token, since updating the tokenOut overwrote the price update of the tokenIn.

From there, they exchanged the token for $31 million worth of tokens for both Blockchains Ethereum and Polygon.

The company pointed out that the software conducting trade and is supposed to mark such actions suggests that an error has been exploited.

Blockchain researcher Igor Igamberdiev said the stolen tokens included $18.2 million in Wrapped Ethereum, $10.5 million in MATIC tokens and $2 million worth of WBTC. Others include Wrapped Bitcoin, Chainlink, Unit Protocol, Aavegotchi and Immutable X.

For more information, read the original story in Ars Technica.

Featured Tech Jobs

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Related articles

Cyber Security Today, March 27, 2024 – A botnet exploits old routers, a new malware loader discovered, and more warnings about downloading code from...

This episode reports on a new network of 40,000 infected small and home office routers and other devices that are part of a criminal botnet

Cyber Security Today, March 25, 2024 – A suspected China threat actor going after unpatched F5 and ScreenConnet installations

This episode reports on a new campaign stealing email passwords ,the latest data breaches

A hacker’s view of the civic infrastructure: Hashtag Trending, the Weekend Edition for March 23rd, 2024

What does the civic infrastructure look like through the eyes of a hacker? The legendary general Sun Tzu in the Art of War said that in order to defeat your enemy, you must first understand your enemy. How do you do this? He said, “to know your enemy, you must become your enemy.” If we

Cyber Security Today, Week in Review for week ending Friday, March 22, 2024

This episode features discussion on lessons learned from the ransomware attack on the British Library, advice for managing expectations of IT/security teams, why firms are leaving Google Firebase unprotecte

Become a member

New, Relevant Tech Stories. Our article selection is done by industry professionals. Our writers summarize them to give you the key takeaways