DeFi protocol Balancer has been attacked by hackers who have stolen about $500,000. Crypto analyst Steven Zheng said:
"Apparently someone drained a Balancer Pool made up of WETH and STA and got away with $500k worth of WETH."
The attack has been confirmed by Balancer Labs co-founder Mike McDonald. According to exchange 1inch, the attacker has manipulated Balancer's smart contract causing a lack of liquidity in its pools:
"The attacker has used the funds to exchange WETH for STA and vice versa back and forth 24 times. As a result, the STA pool has been left empty. With each exchange of WETH for STA, Balancer's pool received 1% less STA than expected."
As a result, the hacker has been able to easily withdraw WETH, WBTC, SNX and LINK tokens from Balancer's smart contract. The attack has been possible thanks to the deflation mechanism incorporated in the STA, which burns 1% of the amount transferred in each transaction.
1inch believes the organizer of the attack is "a very advanced intelligent contract developer with a deep knowledge and understanding of the main DeFi protocols." His identity remains a mystery since he has used Ethereum's mixer Tornado Cash in order to hide any trace.
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