According to Peckshield, hackers have begun the movement of the stolen funds from recently hacked decentralized finance protocol, Radiant Capital.
As per a Thursday post on X, the blockchain security firm revealed that the hackers had moved most of the $58 million looted belonging to the platform from layer 2 protocols like Arbitrum and Binance BNB Chain to Ethereum.
How the Attack on Radiant Capital Manifested
The sudden movement of the funds has sparked speculations that the attackers are aiming to obscure the pathway of the loot. As revealed, the bad actors have moved 20,500 Ether which is about $52 million.
The speculation is based on how hackers mostly use Ethereum as a pathway to conceal the movement of stolen funds through Tornado Cash and other transaction mixers. More so, hackers have used the tool to successfully obfuscate loot from WazirX, Pancake Bunny, CoinStats, Unizen, Orbit Chain, and Penpie.
Recall that last week, Radiant Capital lost more than $58 million to a cyber breach. In a post, the DeFi platform disclosed that the hacker capitalized on the “transferFrom” function to drain the funds.
To manifest the attack, the hackers took over numerous private keys belonging to signers, allowing the bad actors to have full control of several smart contracts. With the keys, the perpetrators can easily withdraw assets on the smart contract to their wallet.
Also, the exploiters can sometimes upgrade the proxy contract implementation to activate the withdrawal function. In a report, Hacken explained how the cryptocurrency landscape lost more than $316 million to hacks relating to private key breaches.
It is worth mentioning that this is the second time in 2024 Radiant Capital will suffer an exploit. Recall that in January, the DeFi protocol halted market activities on its lending and borrowing protocol on Arbirtrum after suffering a $4.5 million exploit through its USDC markets.
Beosin Alert, a blockchain security firm, explained that Radiant Capital suffered a flash loan exploit.
Increasing Exploit on Crypto Projects
The increasing exploit has fueled questions about the security of cryptocurrency and other blockchain innovations. Hacken disclosed that within the third quarter of 2024, hackers stole more than $460 million from crypto projects across 28 incidents.
During that quarter, centralized exchanges suffered the most losses as Indian-based cryptocurrency trading platform, WazirX lost more than $234 million to hackers. According to a Binbits report, the attacker has moved a significant portion of the loot.
Meanwhile, in its report, Hacken explained how the recovery rate of stolen funds in Q3 2024 is low. More so, the firm disclosed that only 5% of all stolen funds from crypto projects have been retrieved.
Additionally, Hacken stated that the recovery rate is the lowest the cryptocurrency landscape has reclaimed in recent years.
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