Ronin network has suffered from what could be termed the largest exploit ever in the decentralized finance sector. On Tuesday, the network announced that more than $625 million worth of the USDC stablecoin and Ethereum (STH) had been stolen.
Ronin network hacked for over $625M
The Ronin Network published a blog post on Tuesday confirming this exploit. The attack affected the validator nodes of Sky Mavis, which are the publishers of the popular play-to-earn Axie Infinity game. The Ronin network has since frozen transactions on the Ronin bridge that facilitates deposits and withdrawals from the blockchain.
The blog post states that the team is working with law enforcement authorities to recover the stolen funds. The attacker withdrew more than $625M worth of ETH and USDC from the network on March 23.
The blog post states that the attacker used hacked private security keys to gain unauthorized access to the network validator nodes. The attacker managed to withdraw assets without being noticed. The exploit was detected almost a week after it was made.
Sky Mavis says that the attacker successfully stole the funds because of changes made to the network after experiencing a massive user load in November following the increased popularity of the Axie Infinity game. While the changes were discontinued, the permissions given at the time were never revoked.
“As we’ve witnessed, Ronin is not immune to exploitation, and this attack has reinforced the importance of prioritizing security, remaining vigilant, and mitigating all threats,” the blog post read.
Largest DeFi hack
This Ronin network attack could be termed the largest DeFi exploit ever. The largest attack happened last year when a hacker stole $611 million from the Poly network. However, the majority of these funds were returned. Last month, another exploit on the Wormhole bridge led to a $322 million theft.
The majority of the cryptocurrencies stolen from the Ronin network are still on the attacker’s wallet address. However, 6250 ETH has already been moved to other wallet addresses. RON, the native token for the Ronin network, has dipped by nearly 20% during the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
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