20% will go to the hackers as a reward

​SafeMoon exchange settles with hackers for the return of 80% of the stolen funds

19.04.2023 - 11:25

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2 min

What’s new? The hackers who hacked SafeMoon, a decentralized crypto exchange (DEX), on March 28 agreed to return 80% of the $8,9 million stolen from the liquidity pool. They will keep 20% as a reward. The main condition of the deal was that the exchange would refuse to press charges and prosecute. On April 18 a Twitter user under the nickname SafeMoonSpidey reported this with reference to the captions to the transactions from the SafeMoon deployment address, where the platform’s representatives accepted the proposed conditions.

What else is known about the incident? Hackers exploited a vulnerability in the token burning mechanism, with the attack itself being initiated using the address of the project’s developer. Analysts speculate that the reason could have been a leak of the administrator’s key.

Later, the hackers contacted SafeMoon, calling their actions accidental, and said they intended to return the funds. The next day, they transferred more than $1,26 million in BNB tokens to the exchange.

As part of the agreement, the exchange will receive about $7,12 million; the hackers will keep $1,78 million, with no legal action to be taken by the platform.

“After careful consideration of the circumstances, it is believed this is the best in the best interest of SafeMoon and the community,” the exchange wrote.

A similar incident occurred with the Euler Finance DeFi protocol. On March 13, it lost more than $175 million in a hacking attack. On March 20 the attacker contacted the project and said he was ready to return all funds, and on April 4 the Euler Finance team reported that after successful negotiations the hacker had returned the entire amount.

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