It’s a titanic loot that one or more hackers have managed to steal. The Ronin network, used for the online game Axie Infinity, was the victim of a major hack, the hackers stealing cryptocurrencies worth around 600 million dollars, announced Tuesday the manager of the network.
The fraudster(s) stole a total of 173,699 ethereum and 22.5 million USDC on March 23, Ronin details on his blog. That amounts to $615 million at current cryptocurrency prices, or about $545 million on the day of the attack.
“We are working with authorities, cryptographers and our investors to ensure that all funds are recovered or refunded,” says the network manager. But “the majority of hacked funds are still in the hacker’s wallet,” he adds.
One of the biggest attacks
This is one of the biggest computer attacks involving cryptocurrencies. An “ethical” hacker stole the equivalent of $600 million from the Poly Network platform last August before returning it in the following days.
The United States also recently announced that it had recovered the equivalent of $3.6 billion in bitcoins stolen in 2016 from the Bitfinex virtual trading platform. But they were worth around $71 million at the time.
The Sky Mavis team, publisher of the game Axie Infinity, discovered the security flaw on Tuesday, after being notified by a user who was no longer able to withdraw his ethereums. The investigation is still ongoing, but the hacker apparently used private “keys” to access digital funds, the passwords needed to access cryptocurrencies, according to Ronin.
Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based game, a decentralized digital ledger that cannot be changed. It allows you to earn money in the form of NFTs, digital tokens. One can participate in battles between Axies, colorful characters, and earn “Smooth Love Potion” (SLP), which can then be exchanged for money or reinvested in the game. Created in 2018 by Sky Mavis, a firm based in Vietnam, the game has exploded in developing countries. Around 35% of traffic and the majority of the 2.5 million daily active players are based in the Philippines.