DeFi Lender Euler Finance Hit By $197 Million Hack, Experts Say

Decentralized lending protocol Euler Finance was hit by an attack that drained $197 million in cryptocurrencies from its platform on Monday, making it the largest hack in its corner of the digital-assets market this year. From a report: The bulk of the hacker's loot -- worth roughly $135 million -- was denominated in staked Ether tokens (stETH), while the remainder was held in wrapped Bitcoin and stablecoins DAI and USDC, according to security firm BlockSec. Some of the proceeds from the attack are already being laundered through Tornado Cash, a US-sanctioned platform which enables users to obfuscate their transaction history, security companies PeckShield Inc and Elliptic said.

The incident on Monday morning in London has almost wiped out Euler's on-chain value, leaving only around $9.7 million locked on the platform, data from DeFiLlama show. Euler Finance allows users to lend and borrow large amounts of cryptoassets through an automated service that does not require human intervention. The protocol's EUL token fell more than 50% to a low of $2.88 after the attack was disclosed, according to pricing data from CoinGecko. Details of the hack weren't immediately provided by the platform's developer Euler Labs.

Re:

[couchslug]

"Guaranteed content-free, no idea what really happened, whodunnit, or what could've been done about it. Useless for people with clue, scare-fodder for the plebs. Who, by the by, should call their "cyber security" rep and throw more money at them, "for security".

But msmash likes it so much."

Par for the no-effort Dicedot course.

Huh?

[Errol backfiring]

The bulk of the hacker's loot -- worth roughly $135 million -- was denominated in staked yellow tulip bulbs, while the remainder was held in wrapped red and pink tulip bulbs DAI and USDC, according to security firm BlockSec.

I tried to simplify it a bit, but what the hell does it even mean?

Likely insider action rather than a true hack

[Ed Tice]

It's almost guaranteed that this was a Ponzi scheme about to collapse and the "hacker" was one of the perpetrators who will now live a life of luxury on the ill-gotten proceeds.

Re:

[HiThere]

I wouldn't say "almost guaranteed". I'd put it at closer to a 60% chance, or maybe even 50%.

Yeah, a lot of those things are inside jobs, and some look like they were planned by top management. But hackers exist, and some of the DeFi people seem to be sloppy about security.

What happened?

[gnasher719]

So whatever they are doing, they had about 135 million dollars of whatever coins under their control, and now they have about 9 million dollars left.

So whoever lent them more than 9 million dollars worth of cryptocurrency, that crypto currency is now gone. So you either get nothing back because you can't take anything from empty pockets, or you get cash back as long as it lasts which will be about five milliseconds.

The two possibilities are that either they are idiots letting someone steal 125 million dollars worth of currency, or they did it himself. And the tokens halved in price because people think their chances of getting bitcoin back for their tokens are halved.

"Man building house of cards discovers...

[Petersko]

...half the deck is missing."

Really. My goodness. Look at that.

I'm glad

[wakeboarder]

that we have crypto, its easy to steal and it gives something for hackers to focus on.

I long for the days...

[jenningsthecat]

It used to be that to steal money or other valuable things, you had to gain physical access to them and use muscle power and/or vehicles to move them. Now all that's required is network access to data which are for all intents and purposes massless and which can traverse continents almost instantaneously.

At times like this, the (ostensibly) legitimate owners might wish they had cash, precious metals, or bearer bonds locked in a good vault instead of a "wealth of bits" in a server farm.

I wonder if we'll ever see a "digital heist" movie worth watching. I can't wait to see how they justify a chase scene, a shoot-out, or a physical fight between the good guy and the bad guy.

Crap, I'm getting old...

This is laughable

[mmdurrant]

Real quick - I just wanna point this out. Allegedly, these folks know enough about cryptography to design algorithms that are safe for use in international finance but these same folks don't understand computing well enough to secure their networks?

I'm calling bullshit. Pure bullshit.