The hacker responsible for stealing $7.4 million from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Hundred Finance has recently begun moving the stolen crypto assets after a year of inactivity.
On May 1, the hacker transferred approximately $800,000 worth of Ether (ETH) and Tether (USDT) from Curve’s decentralized exchange (DEX) after providing liquidity on the platform over a year ago.
After withdrawing the funds, the hacker converted the USDT and other cryptocurrencies into ETH, resulting in an increase of over $1 million in their ETH holdings.
Currently, the hacker holds a total of $4.3 million in assets in their wallet, which includes various crypto assets such as Dai (DAI), Wrapped Ether, Frax, and Wrapped Bitcoin.
The security breach on the layer-2 network Optimism was reported by the DeFi protocol on April 15, 2023. According to the blockchain security firm CertiK, the attacker manipulated the exchange rate between ERC-20 tokens and hTOKENS, allowing them to withdraw more tokens than were deposited.
This type of attack, known as a flash loan attack in the DeFi world, involves borrowing large amounts of funds with an uncollateralized loan from a lending platform. The attacker then utilizes these assets to manipulate the price of crypto on DeFi platforms. In the case of the Hundred Finance hack, large loans were taken out based on falsified exchange rates.
Hundred Finance also experienced an exploit on the Gnosis Chain in 2022, where the protocol’s liquidity was drained through a reentrancy attack, resulting in a loss of $6 million.
While flash loan attacks have caused significant damage in the past, April 2024 saw a significant decrease in losses from this type of hack. According to CertiK, flash loan attacks accounted for only $129,000 lost in April, with the largest single incident causing $55,000 in damages. This represents the lowest amount lost to flash loan attacks since February 2022, according to the report.
Furthermore, losses from crypto hacks in general also decreased in April. Security company PeckShield reported a loss of only $60 million to hacks during the month. This represents a sharp decline from the losses of $360 million in February and $187 million in March.
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