White Hat Hacker Returns $10M in ETH After Accidental Front-Run of Ronin Network Exploit
Ronin Network, a leader in the gaming blockchain sector and the backbone of the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, experienced a major security breach. An exploit caused the network to lose approximately $9.8 million worth of Ether (ETH).
Initial reactions labeled this event as another malicious attack. However, new developments hint that a white hat hacker might have conducted it, and the attacker has agreed to return the funds fully. As of the time of writing, the white hat hacker has returned 3,991 ETH.
These ethical hackers typically exploit vulnerabilities to expose security flaws, fix the issues, and then return the stolen assets.
The August 6 update from PeckShield proposed that such a white-hat hacker might have carried out the exploit.
Notably, the exploit involves a maximal extractable value (MEV) bot . MEV bots are tools validators use to seek arbitrage opportunities across decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.
#PeckShieldAlert @Ronin_Network #whitehacked? or Hacked? (w/ ~ $9.33M) pic.twitter.com/wfaY0zhVdI
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) August 6, 2024
These bots can automatically implement strategies to capitalize on market price differences. In this case, the transaction was executed by an MEV bot identified as “0x4ab,” which subsequently transferred 3.9 Ether tokens of the funds to a wallet known as “0x952” or “beaver build.”
Ronin Network later confirmed that approximately 4,000 ETH and 2 million USDC were withdrawn—the maximum amounts that could be taken out in a single transaction.
The Axie Infinity contract deployer thanked the hacker for safeguarding user funds.
“Hey, thanks a lot for white-hat saving user funds today,” they said. “Can we chat over Blockscan chat?”
The aftermath of the chat
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