Blockchain Security Monthly Report | 11 security incidents occurred in February, with a loss of 48.23 million US dollars

According to data from the PeckShield situational awareness platform, in the past month, a total of 11 prominent security incidents occurred in the entire blockchain ecosystem. The degree of damage was rated as "intermediate", and the amount of damage was USD 48.23 million, involving DeFi 4 cases, exchanges 4 1 case, 1 DApp, 1 case of personal theft, 1 case of wallet, etc.

DeFi security

There were 4 DeFi security incidents in February, as follows:

1) On February 15th, the DeFi project bZx team issued an announcement on the official telegram group, stating that a hacker had conducted a vulnerability attack on the bZx protocol. PeckShield security personnel proactively followed up the bZx attack incident and found that the incident was an attack on the design of shared composable liquidity between DeFi projects, especially in DeFi projects with leveraged trading and lending capabilities, this problem is easier to be exploited.

2) On February 18, bZx encountered a similar attack again. This time the attack is different from the previous one. The hacker "deceived" the bZx contract by manipulating the Oracle price, and the root cause was due to shared flows between platforms. It is caused by too little sex and flaws in the design of the price mechanism.

3) On February 23, due to human error during a function upgrade, the chain predictor Chainlink incorrectly marked the price of gold (XAU) as the price of silver (XAG), causing a loss of approximately $ 40,000.

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4) On February 29, Curve, a decentralized stablecoin trading platform, experienced an abnormal transaction. This transaction exchanged USDC worth USD 89,000 for BUSD valued at USD 465,000. The attacker conducted a clamp attack on two bus pools: curd's busd.curve.fi and y.curve.fi.

PeckShield comment: As the functionality of the DeFi project becomes more and more diverse, the hidden security issues are gradually exposed. Given its close relationship with user assets, it can be seen that the security issue of the DeFi project is very serious. Because each project is developed by a different team and has a limited understanding of the design and implementation of their respective products, integrated products are likely to encounter security issues in the process of interacting with third-party platforms, which in turn can lead to enemy suffering. PeckShield hereby recommends that before the DeFi project party goes online, they should seek a team that has conducted in-depth research on the product design of each link of DeFi to do a complete security audit to avoid potential security risks.

Exchange security

There were four exchange security incidents in February, including two hacking:

1) On February 10, the server storing the hot wallet private key on the Altsbit Exchange was hacked, and the theft of the hot wallet private key resulted in the loss of user assets.

2) On February 17, the VBITEX trading platform announced that it was hacked, resulting in malicious alteration of platform data and theft of virtual assets.

3) On February 17, the FCoin exchange claimed that due to funding difficulties, the capital reserve could not be cashed out by users, and the amount of funds that could not be redeemed was between 7,000-13,000 BTC.

4) On February 28, exchanges such as OKEx and Bitfinex suffered frequent DDoS attacks and related services were affected.

Among them, in response to the financial difficulties of the FCoin exchange, CoinHolmes, a visual digital asset tracking system under the PeckShield security team, launched targeted tracking and analysis of the relevant addresses involved. The CoinHolmes on-chain tracking system includes dozens of exchanges, over 60 million address tags, and involves a variety of mainstream digital assets such as BTC, ETH, USDT.

An overview of FCoin asset flow using the CoinHolmes picture, as shown below:

Combining data analysis and visual graphic display, PeckShield security personnel speculated that FCoin's funding chain may have problems in July 2018.

PeckShield comment: Through this incident of FCoin, everyone began to realize the potential crisis of centralized exchanges due to the lack of transparency of assets. This is a disaster, but at the same time I hope it will also be an inflection point. I hope more centralized exchanges will recognize the importance of transparency of funds and the mechanism of reserve payments. For the theft of private exchange keys and server intrusion, PeckShield recommends that exchanges use a more secure defense system, keep their private keys well, and patch operating system or third-party software vulnerabilities in a timely manner.

DApp ecology

A total of 1 DApp security incident occurred in February, which existed on the TRON network. Specifically, on February 03, hackers starting with TKnzni addresses continued to launch transaction rollback attacks on LuckLambo104 contract addresses starting with TGsyJF by creating attack contracts, and made 6,588 TRX.

PeckShield comments: Most DApp ecological security incidents are caused by contract players. Before receiving a player's token or rebate, DApp should check whether the target account is a smart contract. At the same time, developers should conduct security testing before the contract goes online to prevent known attack methods. If necessary, they can seek the assistance of third-party security companies to help them complete the attack testing and basic security defense deployment before the contract goes online.

SIM card attack

A large case of theft of a BTC whale account occurred in February. On February 22, a user who claimed to be “zhoujianfu” posted on Reddit that he had been hacked and lost 1,547 BTC and 60,000 BCH, valued at approximately RMB 260 million. This is the largest personal theft in recent years.

According to the address provided by the victim, CoinHolmes, a visual digital asset tracking system owned by the PeckShield security team, quickly locked the relevant address of the hacker, launched targeted tracking and analysis, and finally drew a panoramic view of the visual path transition:

As shown in the figure, the method of the hacker's transfer of funds on the chain is very professional and complex, so that after the use of visual tools, it has no clear layering and context. By following up and analyzing the stolen BTC assets of the killer whale account, PeckShield security personnel found that after stealing 1,547 BTC, the hackers quickly cut and dispersed the funds and split them into small amounts, and further tried to make the assets through a more complicated obfuscation system. Tracking becomes extremely difficult.

Since the incident on February 22, in just a few days, hackers have used hundreds of addresses to transfer funds. The deepest level has reached 20 levels. In the process of fund splitting and transfer, 11.19 BTC have passed. Multiple transactions flowed into the Bittrex exchange address. As of now, most of the stolen funds are still in the hacker's address, and PeckShield is also locking in monitoring the further movement of target funds.

PeckShield comment: There is reason to believe that the hacker in this attack was a professional and technical gang. The gang made a lot of efforts from the selected target to the long-term tracking and breakthrough on-chain + off-chain. This seems to remind some early-earning and profitable bigwigs that they need to be vigilant against SIM card attacks, phishing and other common means of stealing coins, and carefully protect their crypto assets.

other

In addition to the above, there are some security incidents in February that are also worth watching:

1) The hacker used the loophole in IOTA's official wallet application Trinity to steal funds, and the official announced that the entire network would be closed.

2) Beware of malware called "Raccoon" that uses phishing and toolkits to steal user data and cryptocurrency through the browser.

PeckShield Comments: Various types of security hazards caused by lack of user security awareness and standardized operations have emerged endlessly, and various events such as phishing attacks and fraud are typical. It is reminded that users should carefully keep all kinds of private information, any small oversight may cause irreparable loss.

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