2022 is a rough year for the DeFi ecosystem as hackers continue exploiting the community. From the beginning of the year till now, news of DeFi protocol exploits keeps flooding the crypto industry. So the question is: why do hackers keep targeting decentralized finance protocols?
Today’s report reveals that three DeFi protocols have suffered hack exploits in the past 24 hours. First, TempleDAO, a yield farming protocol, reportedly got attacked yesterday. Peckshield security firm announced the attack on Tuesday, October 11. According to Peckshield, the hacker transferred 1,831 ETH worth approximately $2.34 million from TempleDAO.
Image: DeFi
The firm is yet to release comprehensive details of the attack. But it seems the exploit involved STAX and FRAX. STAX and FRAX are parts of TempleDAO’s staking vaults. Paladin Blockchain security said TempleDAO’s STAX smart contract got hijacked, resulting in the loss.
The $2.3 million loss from TempleDAO is nothing compared to the amount stolen from Mango Markets’ DeFi derivatives platform. Unfortunately, the Mango Markets got hacked a few hours after the TempleDAO attack. Mango Markets is a Solana-based decentralized finance platform for trading crypto assets.
Details Of DeFi Protocol MangoMarkets’ $100 Million Attack
Mango Markets reported news of the attack on Wednesday, October 12. According to the firm, the exploit in which the hacker manipulated an oracle price cost it $100 million.
The attacker followed a self-funded economic pattern, loading an account with $5.5 million USDC. After funding the account with $5.5 million, the exploiter used it to remove a perpetual futures contract for MNGO (Mango Markets’ native token) and traded it against MNGO.
Image: AMBCrypto
Removal of the futures contract resulted in an upward manipulation of the MNGO price. The price manipulation enabled the hacker to withdraw Mango’s treasury loans and drain the liquidity. Among the first to report news of the Mango attack is blockchain security firm OtterSec.
OtterSec said they’re investigating the attack and hope to clear the misinformation about it. The security firm explained that the attack was not a flash loan attack, and the hacker funded his address with $5.5 Million via FTX. OtterSec also said the hacker manipulated prices across all crypto exchanges, not only Solana oracles.
The hacker opened a Mango DAO governance proposal demanding that all bad debts be paid from Mango’s $70 million treasury in exchange for the stolen funds. The attacker also requested a bounty.
MNGO Price Loses 50%, QANX 3.3 Billion Token Supply Cleared
Meanwhile, MNGO token price dropped 50% after news of the attack, but the protocol has very little liquidity left to settle outstanding derivatives contracts.
The third attack on the DeFi community is the QANplatform hack. The attack involved a bridge exploited that cost the protocol approximately $1 million and caused its QANX token price to fall. QANplatform is a quantum-resistant layer-1 blockchain with its native token QANX. The report came on October 11, revealing the loss of the 3.3 billion token supply of the protocol.
Featured image from Pixabay, chart from TradingView.com