Hackers stole more than $8 million from Moola Market DeFi protocol

What’s new? On October 18, hackers attacked the DeFi platform Moola Market and withdrew assets worth about $8,4 million. According to Igor Igamberdiev, head of research at The Block, the attackers transferred 243 000 CELO from cryptocurrency exchange Binance to the protocol and then used the funds to borrow 1,8 million native MOO tokens. They were able to artificially inflate the value of the coin in order to take loans backed by it and take out other assets.

1/3Today @Moola_Market has been exploited for $8.4M:- 8.8M CELO ($6.5M)- 765k cEUR ($0.7M)- 1.8M MOO ($0.6M)- 644k cUSD ($0.6M)It was an incredibly simple attack👇 pic.twitter.com/mSRNaMBwQi— Igor Igamberdiev (@FrankResearcher) October 18, 2022

Comments from the project representatives. The Moola Market team suspended the platform and launched an investigation into the incident. Representatives of the project approached the hackers, stating that law enforcement authorities were involved to block the withdrawn funds. After some time, the attackers returned 93,1% of the stolen assets.

According to Igamberdiev, unknown persons left CELO 700 000 (approximately $500 000) as a reward for the vulnerability discovered. Of that amount, they transferred 50 000 tokens to the address of the financial platform impactMarket. The company's founder, Marco Barbosa, confirmed that the funds were transferred to support families from developing countries in difficult circumstances.

I can confirm that those 50K CELO were sold for cUSD and donated through @impactMarket_ to support thousands of families from 30+ developing countries living in vulnerability as unconditional basic income— Marco | $PACT (@mbarrbosa) October 18, 2022

Despite the exploit, the MOO token is trading at $0,0195 as of October 19 at 12:20 UTC, having gained 7,5% overnight, according to CoinGecko.

Moola Market is a De-Fi platform based on the Celo blockchain. It has a daily trading volume of $357 116. There are currently 28,17 million MOO tokens in circulation, with a maximum supply of 100 million. The most active exchange where tokens are exchanged is Ubeswap.

Earlier, Chainalysis analysts reported that the first half of October became a record for the number of attacks on crypto projects. As a result of 11 hacks, about $718 million was stolen from DeFi-protocols.

To find out why 2022 was a record year in terms of hacking DeFi-projects, see this GetBlock Magazine's article.