Axie Infinity Ronin blockchain is said to have been hacked with fake job offers
Blockchain of high-profile cryptocurrencies Axie Infinity was allegedly hacked with an elaborate phishing scheme involving fake LinkedIn job offers. Blocks reported the news today, citing two sources with knowledge of the incident. It revealed a new dimension to one of the largest decentralized financial hackers, or DeFi, to date.
According to Blockshackers – identified by the US government as the North Korean group Lazarus – targeted employees of Axie Infinity develops Sky Mavis. They allegedly contacted LinkedIn on behalf of a fake company, and when employees took the bait, they continued with several rounds of fake job interviews and then an “extremely generous” fake compensation package. The conclusion culminated in a senior engineer clicking on a PDF file that allegedly contained the official offer – when hackers first compromised the engineer’s computer, then four of the nine nodes used to validate financial transactions on Sky Mavi’s Ronin blockchain.
Sky Mavis previously revealed that the hackers took control of a fifth node from the theoretically decentralized Axie DAO, thanks to a decision to let Sky Mavis sign transactions during a particularly busy period in November. After that, they dropped the Ethereum and USDC cryptocurrencies that supported Sky Mavis’ treasury, equivalent to about $ 625 million at the time. (Following a recent cryptocurrency crash, it is close to $ 225 million now.) The company noticed the hack a week after it happened in March. In its previous autopsy, it blamed “advanced spear-phishing attacks” that compromised an employee who no longer worked for Sky Mavis – but that did not explain the exact mechanism of the hack.
Axie Infinity was once seen as an example of the success of “play to earn” games, with some players making a living from their real money finances. But the value of the tokens fell in the midst of the larger cryptocurrency, and Sky Mavis has spent the last few months recovering from the breach. It raised $ 150 million in funding to help repay players and reopened transactions on the Ronin Bridge last week. (Disclosure: I purchased three axie non-fungible tokens or NFTs to play and report on the game earlier this year.) It also implemented additional security measures to prevent future hacks. In the meantime, it has launched a second game called Axie Infinity Origins and tried to swing away from being known as a money bet instead of a game played for fun.
