Circle And Tether Freeze Hackers' Stolen Crypto Assets

Publishers of stablecoin Circle and Tether compactly freeze their crypto assets. (Photo; Dock. Bitcoin Insider)

JAKARTA - On July 7, there was a massive security breach that rocked Multichain. In this attack, five addresses containing assets worth 67.5 million US dollars (equivalent to Rp1 trillion) were stolen. Circle, publisher USD Coin (USDC), and Tether, which published USDT stablecoins, have taken action to freeze the stolen assets.

Circle reports that it has frozen three accounts that hold stolen assets worth $65 million, including 63 million USDC. Meanwhile, Tether also froze two other accounts holding 2.53 million USDT, as announced by the Fantom Foundation.

In addition, Daniele Sestagalli of the ICE crypto project revealed that the protocol will burn 1.85 million US dollars (Rp28 billion) of ICE tokens stolen in the attack. As a step to replace the burning token, Fantom Multichain users will receive WAGMI tokens via airdrop.

Although this precautionary measure was taken, the perpetrator still had access to the remaining stolen assets, with a value of more than 56 million US dollars (Rp985 billion).

This breach occurred when Multichain stopped its operations after finding an abnormal occurrence. This protocol reports that assets locked on its smart contract MPC have been transferred in an unnatural way.

To move assets from one blockchain to another, users must lock assets on the MPC smart contract from the Multichain bridge. However, the exploiter managed to steal the locked asset and transfer it to another chain.

This exploit has an impact on several blockchains, including Fantom, Dogechain, Moonriver, and Conflux, according to Web3 Knowledge Graph Protocol 0xScope. The Multichain team is currently investigating this incident and does not yet have definite details. Multichain operations are still closed for more than 30 hours and there is no certainty when it will resume.

This security breach demonstrates the importance of continuous efforts to increase security and caution in the crypto industry. The entire crypto community is reminded to be careful of potential risks and remain vigilant in protecting their assets.