Assets linked to the alleged exploitation of the cross-chain router system Multichain have been blocked for over $65 million by stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether.
The action was taken in response to huge, unexplained outflows from the Multichain MPC bridge on July 6. Three addresses that received at least $63.2 million in USD Coin (USDC) from Multichain have been locked, according to the knowledge graph protocol 0xScope.
Two accounts classified by Etherscan as “Multichain Suspicious Addresses” had more than $2.5 million in Tether (USDT) frozen, according to another report from the Fantom Foundation.
On July 6, about $125 million worth of cryptocurrencies were taken out of numerous wallets, damaging the ecosystems of Dogechain, Moonriver, Kava, Conflux and Multichain’s Fantom bridge. Uncertainty surrounds the origin of the anomalous asset transfer.
Multichain tweeted that it was halting its current services without providing a return date. It stated, “Please don’t use the Multichain bridging service now,” adding that “all bridge transactions will be stuck on the source chains.”
According to reports, Michael Kong, CEO of Fantom Protocol, stated that the movement of money “does not appear to be a normal hack” because the resources supplied to the accused attacker’s wallets were not moved to another location. Investigations continue to be conducted.
Users can move tokens between networks thanks to multichain. Since its leadership disappeared a few weeks ago, it has dealt with technical and operational issues.
With multiple cases documented in 2022, bridges like Multichain are among the most vulnerable targets for cryptocurrency hackers. According to recent blockchain security company SlowMist research, approximately $30 billion in cryptocurrency assets have been stolen in hundreds of attacks since 2012.
Smart contract weaknesses, rug pulls, flash loan assaults, frauds, and private key breaches are the top five most often hacks.118 exchange hacks, 217 Ethereum ecosystem hacks, 162 BNB Smart Chain ecosystem attacks, 119 EOS ecosystem breaches, and 85 hacks using nonfungible tokens (NFTs) made up the total number of occurrences. Over the past ten years, hacking on cryptocurrency exchanges has cost over $10 billion.
