Hackers steal $ 10 million from THORChain crypto protocol

Unknown attackers stole at least $ 10 million from the THORChain decentralized protocol. According to preliminary data, 36.75 BTC worth about $ 3 million were withdrawn, as well as another $ 7 million in cryptocurrency via the BNB Chain, Ethereum, and Base networks. The investigation of the incident is ongoing — it has not yet been determined which vulnerability was exploited by the hackers.

The THORChain team responded quickly: trading on the platform was stopped, and the network went into emergency shutdown mode. Nevertheless, there was no official notification from the protocol regarding the incident.

The attack immediately affected the market: the platform’s native RUNE token dropped by almost 13%, according to CoinGecko data.

THORChain is a decentralized protocol for cross-chain cryptocurrency exchange without the use of wrapped tokens. It supports native swaps for BTC, ETH, ATOM, LTC, and a number of other assets. Liquidity for exchanges is provided by the platform users themselves.

The hack took place amid a series of attacks on crypto projects. On the evening of May 12, hackers broke the TAC protocol, a bridge between the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem and The Open Network (TON) blockchain integrated with the Telegram messenger. The attackers withdrew more than $ 3 million in USDT, BLUM, and other assets.

A few days before, the Renegade. fi protocol was hacked: the hacker exploited a vulnerability in the decentralized dark pool based on Arbitrum, but later returned more than 90% of the stolen funds — about $ 190,000.

on May 7, TrustedVolumes, a market maker that provides liquidity for the DEX aggregator 1inch, fell victim to an attack. The losses amounted to almost $ 6 million.