Aurora Labs CEO Alex Shevchenko shares details of how Malefactors tried to hack Rainbow again
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- NEAR Protocol (NEAR) Rainbow Bridge attacked, no user funds lost
- Alex Shevchenko has an unusual offer for an attacker
Last Saturday, an unidentified criminal tried to hack Rainbow, a bridge mechanism for value transfer between Near Protocol (NEAR) and Ethereum (ETH). That’s why he’s still regretting it.
NEAR Protocol (NEAR) Rainbow Bridge attacked, no user funds lost
In his recent Twitter thread, Mr. Shevchenko shared the details of a failed attack on the Ethereum/NearBridge that occurred in the early hours of last Saturday.
On Rainbow Bridge attack during the weekend
— Alex Shevchenko (@AlexAuroraDev) 22 August 2022
tl; DR: Similar to May Attack; No user funds lost; The attack was reduced automatically within 31 seconds; The attacker lost 5 ETH. pic.twitter.com/clnE2l8Vgz
In order to corrupt the network’s consensus, an attacker submitted a concocted NEAR Protocol (NEAR) block to Rainbow’s main contract. However, his transaction was automatically challenged by NEAR’s independent watchdog. As the attack failed, Malefactor lost 100% of its stake, or 5 Ether.
The response took 4 Ethereum (ETH) blocks, or about 31 seconds, with no human interaction. The team was immediately informed of the attack, but they only needed to check if the system was working as intended, says Mr. Shevchenko:
After notifications on strange activities, within 1 hour the team was checking that everything was fine and was going back to sleep without disturbing themselves or the users.
The CEO of Aurora Labs also stressed that security is the first priority for his team: he launched the second largest bug bounty campaign in the entire crypto history.
Alex Shevchenko has an unusual offer for an attacker
After releasing a summary of the attack analysis, the CEO of Aurora Labs invited hackers to participate in a new wave of Rainbow’s bug bounties, conducted in conjunction with the ImmutableX platform.
Under its terms, every whitehat hacker who finds bugs in Aurora Labs products can apply for up to $1,000,000 as a reward.
The Rainbow Bridge is one of the most important elements of the architecture of the NEAR protocol.