The decentralized finance (DeFi) space was rocked last morning by news that Nexus Mutual founder Hugh Karp was hit with a personal attack.<\/p>\n
His project, a decentralized mutual product to allow users to hedge against risks in the DeFi space, was not directly affected. But, his personal account, which contained over $8 million worth of the native NXM token, was exploited.<\/p>\n
According to early reports from the Nexus Mutual team, what had happened was that the leading DeFi extension, MetaMask, was corrupted to broadcast altered transactions. The attacker managed to alter the transactions from MetaMask so that it directed the coins to his own address.<\/p>\n
Pretty much think of this as the classic “clipboard” attack on Bitcoin users, where users attempting to send their coins to one address would be forced to send it to the attacker’s address.<\/p>\n
The DeFi founder, though, says that he has acquired the IP of the attacker.<\/p>\n
Shortly after the attack, Karp tweeted that he would distribute $300,000 worth of bounty to the attacker if he or she returned the funds:<\/p>\n
“To the attacker. Very nice trick, definitely next level stuff. You’ll have trouble cashing out that much NXM. If you return the NXM in full, we will drop all investigations and I will grant you a $300k bounty.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nTo the attacker. Very nice trick, definitely next level stuff.<\/p>\n
You'll have trouble cashing out that much NXM.<\/p>\n
If you return the NXM in full, we will drop all investigations and I will grant you a $300k bounty.<\/p>\n
— Hugh Karp \ud83d\udc22 (@HughKarp) December 14, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n