Sturdy stablecoin market reopens three days after $800K exploit

After recently suffering a recent exploit on its platform, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Sturdy Finance has reopened its stablecoin market.

On June 16, the lending platform announced that it had unpaused the stablecoin market, allowing users to access their funds. The DeFi protocol told its users that no funds were at risk and the decision to pause the market was simply done out of “an abundance of caution.”

The stablecoin market is now unpaused, enabling users in this market to access their funds!

No funds in this market were ever at risk; the market was only paused out of an abundance of caution. As an additional safety measure, the bb-a-USD pool has been disabled pic.twitter.com/uRL0gKQSEJ

— Sturdy (@SturdyFinance) June 16, 2023

On June 12, the platform paused all markets in response to an attack that led to the loss of 442 Ether (ETH), worth around $800,000 at the time. The exploit took advantage of a faulty price oracle and used it to drain funds from the platform. 

In a community update, Sturdy Finance noted that its team is collaborating with security experts specializing in on-chain analysis to retrieve the funds. The team also highlighted that it is working with global law enforcement to gather information.

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The DeFi protocol also offered a $100,000 bounty to the hacker who performed the exploit. According to the team, it will let the matter go if the attacker returns the rest of the funds to its crypto wallet. However, the team also mentioned in the community update that if the funds are not returned, it is offering the money to anyone who can help bring an arrest or recover the funds.

In other news, hackers are developing more ingenious ways to hide their stolen funds. On June 15, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis published a report detailing how hackers use mining pools to conceal their ill-gotten gains. Hackers use this method to disguise their funds as earnings from mining activities, not ransomware attacks.

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