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The Ronin sidechain has 9 validator nodes, and in order to deposit or withdraw funds, approval of at least 5 validators is mandatory. The hacker stole private keys — the special password required for crypto transactions — belonging to four of Ronin’s validators and got the fifth one from a validator run by Axie DAO.
The attacker got them via a backdoor in Sky Mavis’ gas-free RPC node. In the wake of the theft, Ronin says it has tweaked the validation threshold to eight out of nine signatures in order to discourage any such incidents in the future. The funds were stolen via two transactions, both of which have been logged by Etherscan.
Sky Mavis says it is working with law enforcement officials and major crypto exchanges such as Binance and Huobi to recover the lost funds and nab the culprit. However, it appears the hacker will have a hard time getting away with the stash valued at over $600 million. Experts talking to CoinDesk say the hacker deposited the funds using centralized exchanges such as Huobi and FTX, which have stringent identity verification protocols in place.
To put it simply, the hacker risks getting their identity revealed with further moves as these exchanges comply with regulatory norms. And even with indirect laundering and shady exchange points available, moving a sum as large as $600 million without being traced is going to be a massive challenge. Last year, the hacker behind the $611 million Poly Network theft returned the funds.
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