Aurora blockchain platform developers pay $ 6 million to hacker

The developers of the Aurora blockchain reported that they paid a «white» hacker $ 6 million in reward for helping to prevent the theft of 70,000 ETH.

The Aurora blockchain’s Twitter page said that in April, a white hacker contacted them via the Immunefi platform and reported possible problems with the blockchain. Thanks to the timely detection of the vulnerability and quick fixes, the funds remained safe.

As a reward for the responsible disclosure the white hat hacker «pwning.eth» has been awarded $ 6M in AURORA tokens, the maximum possible bounty in the bug bounty program and to our best knowledge, the second highest bug bounty ever paid in history.

— Aurora (@auroraisnear) June 7, 2022

While today 70,000 ETH are worth $ 122 million, at the time of the hacker’s request, their value was $ 210 million. Therefore, Aurora developers decided to pay the «white hacker» $ 6 million as a thank you for his help.

The actions of white hackers are legal and do no harm. They hack into systems and learn confidential information, but they do not use it for mercenary purposes. Unlike the crypto fraudsters who recently hacked the account of the world’s most popular digital artist, Mike Winkelman. The hackers posted a phishing link on the artist’s page to the «official» website where you can register for the NFT draw. Users who clicked on the link were attacked and lost 35 ETH worth about $ 71,000.