The decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Balancer has fallen prey to an exploitation resulting in a loss of $900,000 from the platform.
Balancer confirmed the incident August 27, shortly after the disclosure of vulnerabilities within several of its pools.
In a statement, Balancer acknowledged the exploit's connection to the previously mentioned vulnerability and noted that mitigation measures have been implemented to minimize risks.
However, affected pools cannot be paused, necessitating users' withdrawal from impacted liquidity pools (LPs) to prevent further exploitation.
Eminent blockchain security expert Meier Dolev highlighted an Ethereum-based wallet, purportedly owned by the attacker, that received two transfers of the Dai stablecoin during the exploit.
CoinTelegraph reported consecutive transfers of DAI valued at $636,812 and $257,527, aggregating to more than $893,978.
On August 22, Balancer revealed the presence of a critical vulnerability affecting various V2 pools. In response, the platform swiftly executed emergency mitigation procedures to secure a substantial portion of its Total Value Locked (TVL). However, it was indicated that certain funds remained exposed to risk.
Affected users were urged to expeditiously withdraw their funds from the vulnerable pools, encompassing assets on platforms such as Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche, Gnosis, Fantom, and zkEVM.
It is noteworthy that at the time of the risk alert, only 1.4% of Balancer's TVL, valued at $5 million, was deemed at risk. This figure subsequently reduced to $2.8 million within days.
A recent report from CertiK underscores the prevalence of hackers capitalizing on various scams and malicious exploits in the second quarter of 2023, resulting in the successful theft of $313 million.
Notably, this marks a notable decrease from the $745 million reported during the same period in 2022.