$3 Million in AVAX Swiped in Hack Against Avalanche-Based Social App

The hacks against cryptocurrency projects continue in full force, with the latest victim being the Avalanche-based social app – Stars Arena.

According to early estimations, the perpetrators have swiped almost all funds (roughly $2.9 million in AVAX) from the platform, which later apologized and raised hopes to make users whole again.

• Launched about a week ago, Stars Arena quickly garnered the community’s attention, perhaps due to its many similarities to the Ethereum-based Friend.Tech project. Within this timeframe, the protocol’s followers on X have soared to over 25,000.
• During the early hours of Saturday, the team behind Stars Arena announced the exploit on X, explaining that there had been a breach of the smart contract.

There has been a major security breach with the smart contract.

We’re actively checking the issue.

DO NOT deposit any funds.

Stay tuned for updates.

— Stars Arena (@starsarenacom) October 7, 2023

• Although the team didn’t provide specifics on the amount stolen, the blockchain security resource PeckShield suggested that the numbers are close to $3 million in AVAX tokens.
• DeFiLlama data shows that the perpetrators left the project with about $0.5 in total value locked, meaning that they had siphoned off essentially everything.
• The attack comes just a few days after several X users warned about potential security vulnerabilities in Stars Arena’s smart contract. Interestingly, Avalanche’s founder – Emin Gün Sirer – downplayed the warnings.
• Stars Arena’s team published an update later on, apologizing for the incident, warning users to stay away from the site, at least of now, due to an ongoing DDoS attack, and said they are working on finding a solution to recover the funds.

We are deeply sorry for what happened.

Our smart contract was exploited and the funds were drained. The site is currently under DDOS attack.

We are working on a solution to get everyone’s…

— Stars Arena (@starsarenacom) October 7, 2023

The article was first published on: Oct 7, 2023