Hackers steal US$600M from blockchain tied to Axie Infinity game
BNN Bloomberg
The company behind the popular Axie Infinity crypto game said it will reimburse online participants who lost funds after hackers stole about US$600 million from a blockchain system underpinning the game.
The company behind the popular Axie Infinity crypto game said it will reimburse online participants who lost funds after hackers stole about US$600 million from a blockchain system underpinning the game.
“We are fully committed to reimbursing our players as soon as possible,” Aleksander Leonard Larsen, chief operating officer of the gaming studio Sky Mavis, said via text message. “We’re still working on a solution, that is an ongoing discussion.”
Hackers exploited a security weakness in a so-called bridge -- software that lets people convert tokens into ones that can be used on another network -- to drain it of 173,600 Ether and 25.5 million USDC tokens in two transactions. The breach happened on March 23, but was only discovered Tuesday, according to Ronin, the blockchain that supports Axie Infinity.
The funds swiped include the “deposits of players and speculators and the Axie Infinity Treasury revenue,” Larsen said. Of the Ether stolen, 56,000 belonged to the Axie Infinity treasury, he said. The company doesn’t suspect insider involvement in the heist, according to Larsen.
Axie Infinity is among the biggest of the so-called play-to-earn games, which allow participants to accumulate tradeable crypto coins. Daily active users swelled last year in developing countries hit hard by Covid, including the Philippines, Brazil and Venezuela. It continued to be played Wednesday.
The attack is the latest to show that bridges are often rife with problems. The computer code of many isn’t audited, allowing for hackers to exploit vulnerabilities. It’s often unclear who runs them and exactly how. Identities of validators, who are supposed to order transactions on bridges, are often shrouded in mystery. And yet there are thousands of bridges out there, and they move hundreds of million of dollars worth of crypto.
