This is the biggest cryptocurrency hack in history

The announcement came as a shock: Axie Infinity, the most popular game play to win (“We play to win”) was a hack topic that will go down in history for a long time: hackers managed to exploit a flaw in the Ronin blockchain, which is the basis of this game. , through two transactions, convert 173600 ETHthen 25.5 million US dollars – one stable angle Its value is equal to a dollar. In total, this represents the equivalent of $622 million.

Almost a week to detect the intrusion

Six days passed before Sky Mavis, publisher Axie Infinity revealed the pot of roses – the hack occurred on March 23 but wasn’t discovered until much later. The alleged attacker(s) successfully hacked the users’ private keys – a combination of 256 sequences of 0 and 1, a code considered impenetrable.

The flaw appears to date back to November 2021. At that time, due to too many Axie Infinity users, Sky Mavis relied on a validator called Axie DAO and authorized it to sign various transactions on its behalf. However, this access, which was supposed to be temporary, was not completely revoked. It also appears that the hackers used what is called “social engineering”, that is, they managed to convince a member of the company to talk about things that were not supposed to be passed on to them.

A breakthrough of historical value

Present at a conference organized in Los Angeles (NFTLA), Jeff Zetlin, co-founder of Sky Mavis, acknowledged that “ One of the most important breakthroughs in history It remains to be the biggest breakthrough ofCryptocurrency history. The previous record breakout dates back to the summer of 2021; It belongs to Poly Network and the amount stolen is $611 million. However, these were returned by the respective hacker and the performance It turned into a job offer as head of security.

under shooting Criticism, the founders of Axie Infinity tried to save face. Jeff Zetlin felt there was a possibility.” To determine attackers And bring them to justice Alexander Larser, co-founder of Sky Mavis, confirmed that the respective accounts will be compensated for their losses. Indeed, if the Axie Infinity, AXS and SLP coins experienced relative declines of 7 and 5%, respectively, they would recover some of them. Colorsindicating that the episode will be without serious consequences for the future of Axie Infinity and Sky Mavis.