White Hat Hackers Rewarded $500,000 Bounty After Exploiting Ronin Network

Hackers are reaping the rewards after exploiting a Ronin (RON) bridge for $10 million in Ethereum (ETH).

According to the gaming-focused blockchain’s X account, white hat hackers have returned $10,000,000 in USDC to the network and will receive $500,000 in compensation for their efforts.

“The ETH (~$10 M) has been returned and we expect that the USDC will be returned later today. We thank the white hats for their vigilance and integrity. The Bug Bounty Program will reward the white hats with a 500 K bounty.

The bridge will undergo an audit before it is reopened. We will provide updates as we make progress on this audit.

We aim to shift operation of the bridge away from the current structure. We will be working with the Ronin validators to onboard a new solution and will provide updates on this as the work progresses.

We thank the Ronin community and our allies for their support today.”

Ronin Network says they were contacted earlier in the day by “white hats”, hackers exploiting in good faith, about the potential bridge exploit.

“After verifying the reports, the bridge was paused approximately 40 minutes after the first on-chain action was spotted.

The actors withdrew ~4K ETH and 2M USDC, valued at ~$12M, which is the maximum amount of ETH and USDC that can be withdrawn from the bridge for one single transaction withdrawal. The bridge limit serves as a critical safeguard to increase the security of large fund withdrawals, and it effectively prevented further damage in this exploit.”

According to Ronin, the bridge exploit was caused by a new update.

“We are working on a solution for the root cause. The bridge update will undergo intensive audits, before being voted on by the bridge operators for deployment.

We are currently negotiating with the actors, who appear to be acting as white-hats and have responded in good faith. Regardless of the result of the negotiations, all user funds are safe and any shortfalls will be re-deposited into the bridge when it opens up.”

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