Hedera, the public distributed ledger platform, has disclosed that an exploit on its mainnet has resulted in the loss of liquidity pools tokens. The theft affected the HBAR and USDC pools, with the attacker draining all of the tokens held in the pools. Hedera states that it acted immediately to restrict the attack and is now collaborating with affected parties to mitigate the impact. The exploit highlights the vulnerability of blockchain-based liquidity pools and the need for continual security monitoring.
Hedera revealed in a Twitter announcement that its mainnet had been exploited, resulting in a loss of liquidity tokens, although the consensus layer remained unaffected. Similar to other crypto projects, network exploitation is one of the challenges faced by Hedera, a decentralized, open-source, proof-of-stake public ledger, and this latest exploit has affected multiple decentralized exchanges (DEXs). The hackers targeted liquidity pool accounts linked to Uniswap V2-derived contract codes before moving stolen tokens to the Hshport Network Bridge. The bridge operators detected the unusual activity and took swift action to disable it. Hedera has identified the root cause and is working with its community to provide a solution. Council members will sign the necessary transactions to authorize a new code deployment on the mainnet to remove the vulnerability when a solution is found, and the protocol says that mainnet proxies will then resume normal activities. Hedera is yet to disclose the number of tokens taken, but the hack has dented the blockchain’s recent milestone and its recent upgrade to convert Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible Smart Contract code to the Hedera Token Service (HTS). The HBAR price declined by over 3% on the chart due to the exploitation and the ongoing market-wide downturn, affecting the total value locked on SaucerSwap, which has dropped by 30% in the last 24 hours.