The industry for decentralized finance (DeFi) was shaken up by yet another significant attack during the last week of March. The hack on the DeFi protocol Euler Financial, which resulted in the loss of an enormous $196 million, is now the largest DeFi hack that has occurred in 2023.
When investigating the specifics of the transit of hijacked cash, it became apparent that the breach may have been the work of hackers from North Korea.
One of the sequences of transactions conducted by the hacker is the transfer of money to an address that is associated with North Korean agents. This particular transaction involves the transfer of 100 ETH.
The blockchain investigative tool Chainalysis discovered (1) that 100 ETH worth of Euler’s stolen cash had been moved to an address that had been blocklisted in a prior attack as having connections to North Korea.
100 ETH stolen in Monday's #Euler Finance hack have moved to an address associated with a previous hack carried out by #NorthKorea-linked actors. This may mean the Euler hack is the work of #DPRK too, or could be misdirection by other hackers. We'll share more details as possible https://t.co/DxvGsc90Z8 pic.twitter.com/5QPphNTyYY
— Chainalysis (@chainalysis) March 17, 2023
Specifics of the Euler Financial Hack
On Friday, March 17, hackers carried out an assault known as a flash loan on the decentralized financial protocol known as Euler Finance. This attack resulted in the theft of a total of $196 million.
The hacker transferred a total of 3,000 ether (ETH) from Euler Finance’s hacker address to the deployer address of Euler Finance the very following day, which was March 18.
The funds originated from the hacker address of Euler Finance.
It is interesting to note that immediately after the attack took place, Euler Labs offered a prize of one million dollars for anyone who assisted in locating the hacker.
“Today, the Euler Foundation is pleased to announce the creation of a $1 Million Reward in the hope that this will give an added motivation for information that contributes to the arrest of the Euler Protocol Attacker and the restoration of any funds stolen by the Euler Protocol Attacker.
Please e-mail the Euler Foundation at reward@euler.foundation if you have any information that you think would be useful in this investigation,” the organization said.
Michael Bentley, the chief executive officer of Euler Labs, also voiced his anger over the attack and added that the company has been undertaking extensive security checks over the course of the past year. Bentley stated the following in one of his tweets:
“The Euler project has always placed a strong emphasis on security. Audits were performed on the Euler smart contracts, along with an examination of the potentially vulnerable lines of code.
I would want to express my gratitude to the investigators and the security specialists who are working on the leads.
There is not much that I am at liberty to discuss in public regarding this matter, but I want everyone to be aware that there is a vast team of individuals of world-class caliber doing everything they can, day and night.
During the crypto winter of 2022, the DeFi protocols were the target of significant hacking attempts, which resulted in a total loss of more than $4 billion in a single year.