A major pillar of blockchain technology is transparency. This means that any system built on blockchain is by definition public- a fact that introduces an entirely new set of vulnerabilities and threats. As a result, cleverly orchestrated hacks on blockchain solutions are not an uncommon feat. Even the biggest names in the field continue to suffer from attacks, resulting in losses equating to millions of dollars.
From an outsider’s perspective, returning millions of dollars worth of funds after successfully pulling off a complicated exploit is, at best, admirable, and at worst, foolish. What could be the motivation behind such a decision?
The peculiarity of the enormous bids surrounding NFTs brings forward several questions about these digital assets. Is there a reason why people are willing to spend thousands of dollars worth of funds for them? What is the technology behind NFTs that ensures their originality? And most importantly, what security risks should I be aware of before I set out to purchase one? Understanding the answers to these common questions is becoming more and more essential as NFTs continue to be a valuable part of the spaces we operate in.
On 21sth November 2021, Pickle finance was hacked, where an attacker was able to drain $19M DAI from the pDai jar. The attack exploited multiple inconsistencies & flaws in the logic of the pickle jar contract.
Harvest finance got hacked for around $34M due to a flashloan attack which manipulated the price in the Curve pool to retrieve more USDT tokens than originally deposited USDT amount in fUSDT pool.
The Yearn Finance hack that occurred on April 13, 2023, resulted in the loss of approximately $11.4 million. The exploit was carried out through a misconfiguration in the yUSDT vault, revealing a flaw in the system's architecture.
The Deus DAO hack had significant financial consequences, with users collectively losing around $6.5 million across Arbitrum, BSC, and Ethereum chains. Furthermore, the hack caused the DEI stablecoin to depeg by more than 80%, destabilizing its value and potentially shaking investor confidence.
On Apr 17, 2023. The DeFiGeek Community fell victim to a security breach in which an attacker exploited a flash loan vulnerability, causing the loss of 10 ETH (valued at over $20,000) from their DeFiGeek Community Pool Dai (fDAI-102
On April 15th, 2023, Hundred Finance was hacked, resulting in a loss of approximately $7.4 million USD in various cryptocurrencies. The attacker exploited an integer rounding vulnerability in the platform's contract logic when a market was empty.
The Level Finance hack significantly affected the platform and its users, as the attacker managed to steal $1.1 million in referral rewards. This breach undermined trust in Level Finance and raised concerns about the security of similar DeFi platforms.
