Key facts:
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Exactly was holding more than $36 million at the time of the attack.
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The Exactly protocol was paused, but they have already announced the time of its reactivation.
The attack on a bridge by Optimism, an Ethereum second layer solution, stripped the equivalent of $7.1 million worth of ether (ETH) from the Exactly lending platform.
The 4,323.6 ethers, a native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, were extracted due to a vulnerability present in an Exactly smart contract. This according to data shared by the security firm De.Fi on the X social network.
Exactly alerted its users to the security issue they are experiencing. At the same time, they claimed that even though the protocol had been paused, they could still withdraw their assets.
Hours later, Exactly reported that they had scheduled an update with the solution to the vulnerability who submitted one of their contracts, but gave no details about the problem itself. A few hours ago they confirmed that the reactivation of the protocol and all its functions would come into effect as of 23:51 UTC today, Saturday, August 19.
Exactly also revealed that sent a message to the attacker through the Ethereum network, in block 17944083 of its ledger (blockchain). It should be noted that, for the moment, the identity of the hacker is unknown and no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Despite the Optimism bridge attack, his OP token was not affected in the cryptocurrency market. In fact, in the last 24 hours shows an increase of 2.4%contrary to the general market trend, which is down after the fall in the price of bitcoin (BTC).
The insecurity of bridges in cryptocurrency networks
Bridges are protocols that facilitate the transfer of value between cryptocurrency networks and second layer solutions, such as rollups and sidechains. The bridges use smart contracts where the cryptocurrencies or tokens sent from one network to another are protected. This makes them an attractive target for hackers.
Last year (2022) was one of the worst in terms of cyberattacks on DeFi bridges and protocols. Among the most serious, is the attack on the bridge that connects the Ronin network with Ethereum.
CriptoNoticias reported that the hackers extracted 174,000 ETH from this project, equivalent to more than USD 540 million for the price of ether at that time. Ronin is an Ethereum sidechain created by company Sky Mavis, developers of the popular non-fungible token (NFT) game Axie Infinity.
