Wintermute Whacked by $160M Hack Exploiting Known Vulnerability

But Wintermute made a crucial mistake, Gupta added – it forgot to remove the vanity address as an administrator of the smart contract the hacker drained. Evgeny Gaevoy has assured users that in spite of the massive exploit, the company had twice the amount lost, left in equity, putting to rest any concerns over solvency. As per his statement, Wintermute’s estimated remaining equity should be north of $320 million. Gaevoy said Wintermute would be willing to treat the breach as a “white hat” hack and allow the hacker to keep some of the pilfered funds should the majority be returned. We reached out to the company for more information and will update this story if it responds. In a later tweet, he offered the hacker a 10% bounty on the funds if returned.

We are currently underway in preparing for a Phase IIa trial to test the efficacy in patients with shingles. The Wintermute breach is the latest attack on DeFi protocols, including that of Axie Infinity, Harmony Horizon Bridge, Nomad, and Curve.Finance in the past few months. Some of these thefts have been attributed to the North Korea-backed Lazarus Group. The hack involved a series of unauthorized transactions that transferred USD Coin, Binance USD, Tether USD, Wrapped ETH, and 66 other cryptocurrencies to the attacker’s wallet. On-chain investigator ZachXBTtracked downthe hacker’swallet, which currently holds around $9 million in ether and $38 million in other ERC20 tokens. A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography and is difficult to counterfeit.

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Wintermute is among the largest crypto liquidity providers dedicated to crypto market making for exchanges including Binance and Coinbase. Decentralised finance platforms and software, which aim to provide crypto-based financial services without traditional gatekeepers such as banks, have been targeted by numerous heists in recent years. The sector is little-regulated and victims of crime rarely have recourse. An important distinction sets a market maker apart from bankrupt crypto venture capital firms like 3 Arrows Capital or insolvent lending and yield platforms like Voyager Digital and Celsius Network.

Fall for a “serious error” when it lost 20 million optimism governance tokens meant to facilitate Ethereum scaling solution Optimism’s airdrop. Gaevoy gave creditors of the 7 applications of machine learning the option to “recall” loans if they had concerns about the liquidity or solvency of the company. Furthermore, powerful mining farms have been rendered useless following the recent Ethereum merge. Some of these farm operators might find that cracking Profanity addresses would be an excellent way to return to profitability. Although such a collection of GPUs requires a significant investment, many cryptocurrency mining farms work with a larger number of GPUs.

The author abandoned the project a few years ago, due to fundamental security flaws that enabled cracking the private keys. However, it’s unknown if the threat actor is interested in returning the stolen funds to market indicators and advanced forex trading. At Wintermute Biomedical, our mission is to develop safe, effective, next-generation therapies to combat infectious diseases.

Billionaire Crypto Enthusiast Unhappy that Industry’s Ethical Standards Don’t Match Private Equity Market

The user cited fellow crypto influencer @K06a who had previously estimated that a brute force attack on such an address would be possible in 50 days using 1000 graphics processing units . Informed users on Twitter about the exploit on the platform’s DeFi operations, which has led to a loss of about $160 million. Another day, another $100 million lost to crypto-hungry criminals, and it’s not even the first time coins have evaporated because of Wintermute. Bill Toulas is a technology writer and infosec news reporter with over a decade of experience working on various online publications. Following the recent disclosures, the author of Profanity removed all binaries and archived the project’s GitHub repository to reduce the risk of someone using the insecure tool in the future. The company CEO has clarified that Wintermute’s CeFi and OTC (over-the-counter) operations have not been impacted by the security breach.

• The firm’s CEO described the company as solvent following the $160 million hack.
• This special 4–week hackathon will offer hackers an opportunity to develop innovative DeFi solutions on any blockchain, and compete for a generous prize pool.
• Crypto market maker Wintermute has lost $160M in a hack that targeted its DeFi operations early Tuesday.
• Most crypto investors probably never heard of Wintermute Trading before the Sept. 20 $160 million hack, but that does not reduce their significance within the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Therefore, he has extensive experience in the market-making space which can be extremely beneficial for crypto. We have had over 10,000 hackers take part, with over 1000 projects completed and almost $500k in prizes given out. We are also very proud that many of our hackathon projects have gone on to achieve great success, including Reflexer Labs, Euler, Float and 0xmons.

Crypto market maker Wintermute loses $160 million in DeFi hack

In what’s the latest crypto heist to target the decentralized finance space, hackers have stolen digital assets worth around $160 million from crypto trading firm Wintermute. One of the leading crypto market makers, Wintermute, has lost about $160 million in a hack, becoming the latest crypto firm to suffer a breach. Wintermute’s CEO and founder, Evgeny Gaevoy, revealed in a series of tweets that the firm’s decentralized finance operations were compromised on Sept. 20. Wintermute is a leading global algorithmic market maker and High-Frequency Trading firm for digital assets like cryptocurrencies. Wintermute helps create liquid and efficient markets on centralized and decentralized trading platforms.

Access unmatched financial data, news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop, web and mobile. The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Market makers are the backbone of every crypto exchange, ICO, DApp and many token listings, which is exactly why investors shouldn’t shrug off Wintermute’s hack. When Case approached, it sensed their digital presence; it reacted as seething with faint internal shadows, as if behind frosted glass. Case approached by one grid point, then a stippled gray circle formed on its face. Case withdrew but the circle bulged and detached itself in the form of a smooth sphere, from the cube’s face.

Wintermute Whacked by $160M Hack Exploiting Known Vulnerability

There will be a disruption in our services today and potentially for the next few days and will get back to normal after” Gaevoy warned users as his firm scrambled to get a grip on the situation. Mudit Gupta, chief security officer at Polygon, guessed in a tweet that the hack was a result of a hot wallet compromise due to the Profanity bug uncovered by 1inch contributors last week. 1inch had warned that wallet addresses generated using the Profanity tool were at risk of compromise. Gaevoy indicated compare crypto exchange fees to find a better rate remains solvent, with $320 million in equity left after the hack. Users can expect the platform to face disruptions over the next few days until operations return to normal.

• In total, Wintermute has partnered with over 50 exchanges and trading platforms.
• Unfortunately, the firm had already suffered a mishap earlier this year, having sent $15 million of Optimism tokens to a wrong address, though they were eventually returned by the recipient.
• Get the 5-minute newsletter keeping 75K+ crypto innovators in the loop.
• Case withdrew but the circle bulged and detached itself in the form of a smooth sphere, from the cube’s face.
• Wintermute calls itself „one of the largest players“ in global crypto markets.

Wintermute was hired by the Optimism Foundation to provide liquidity for its token listing in June 2022 but completely messed up by losing 20 million OP tokens. Wintermute’s team disclosed the incident to the Optimism community and posted 50 million USD Coin as collateral to ensure the protocol was fully reimbursed. In addition to traditional proprietary desk trading, Wintermute provides market-making services by facilitating transactions on intermediaries using their own resources.

Evgeny Gaevoy said the theft targeted the company’s decentralised finance operations

The company said that its centralized finance and over-the-counter operations have not been impacted by the security incident. Last week, the Tron network named Wintermute as its official market maker. Unfortunately, the firm had already suffered a mishap earlier this year, having sent $15 million of Optimism tokens to a wrong address, though they were eventually returned by the recipient.

Sign up for cybersecurity newsletter and get latest news updates delivered straight to your inbox daily. Follow THN on Facebook, Twitter  and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post. The open-source project is currently abandoned by its anonymous maintainer, who goes by the moniker johguse, citing „fundamental security issues in the generation of private keys.“ „We are open to treat this as a white hat, so if you are the attacker – get in touch,“ the company’s founder and CEO, Evgeny Gaevoy, said in a tweet. Browse an unrivalled portfolio of real-time and historical market data and insights from worldwide sources and experts.

Wintermute remains solvent – CEO

Case plunged down a shaft of Swiss banks, but the sphere gained on him, becoming darker. Not having any real power then, he manipulated willingly the security and custodial systems of the Villa Straylight to keep track of everyone. 20 years „ago“, someone lost a key, and somehow Wintermute managed a 8-year old boy to bring and leave it in a drawer. Wintermute did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment. Gaevoy or Wintermute did not disclose when the hack took place or the how the attackers were able to succeed, and whether it has alerted law enforcement.

We invest in the best coming out of our hackathons through Encode Invest Club, run Accelerators (e.g. with Thunder, Algorand, Avalanche), and help place talented individuals into jobs through Encode Talent. You are not expected to work every minute of the 4 weeks, we give you lots of flexibility so you can find time on evenings and weekends to learn, build at your own pace and develop your idea. The hackathon lasts 4 weeks, with workshops and 1–1 mentoring sessions happening throughout the hackathon. There will be sessions to find teammates at the start of the hackathon. Hackers will also have the opportunity to participate in several hackathon workshops — details to be announced soon. Decrypt has reached out to Wintermute for comment and will update this story should the company respond.

Wintermute had been using Profanity not to create easy-to-remember names for digital accounts, but to lower its trading transaction costs, since that’s another feature of Profanity’s service, Gaevoy says. When Wintermute learned of the vulnerability last week, they took steps to technologically “blacklist” their Profanity accounts, shielding them from being liquidated. However, due to their own “human error,” one of the 10 accounts didn’t get blacklisted, according to Gaevoy, which probably resulted in the $160 million heist. Traders should not compare the failure of 3AC, Voyager and Celsus to the threat of a liquidity vacuum that is driven by the exodus of the remaining arbitrage desks.