K9 Finance Announces $23K Reward Following $2.4M Shibarium Bridge Hack

The Shiba Inu decentralized finance platform on its Shibarium layer-2 network has offered a bounty of 5 Ether ($23,000) to the individual responsible for a recent bridge exploit, urging the return of the stolen assets.

On Monday, the DeFi platform issued an on-chain message to the attacker, stating that the bounty offer will be available for 30 days. The protocol further noted that after seven days, the bounty amount would begin to decrease.

“Settlement is atomic when we call recoverKnine(). If you call accept() we cannot cancel the deal. Code is law,” K9 Finance stated. “Bounty is live. Please, act swiftly.”

In a post on X on Saturday, Shiba Inu developer Kaal Dhairya indicated that while they have already contacted authorities, the team is open to negotiation with the attacker.

Shiba Inu’s Shibarium bridge suffers a loss of approximately $2.4 million due to the exploit

The exploit on Saturday resulted in a drain of about $2.4 million in digital assets after malicious actors accessed validator signing keys. Utilizing a flash loan to acquire 4.6 million Bone ShibaSwap (BONE) tokens, the attacker gained majority validator power and executed a malicious transaction to transfer the funds out of the bridge.

Dhairya mentioned that in reaction to the attack, Shibarium developers have suspended their stake and unstake functions and relocated their stake manager funds into a hardware wallet governed by a multisig.

The developer emphasized that ensuring network security and protecting user assets are the team’s utmost priorities. They are collaborating with security teams, including Hexens, Seal 911, and PeckShield, for further investigation.

Following the exploit, tokens linked to the Shiba Inu ecosystem experienced price declines. The Shiba Inu (SHIB) token fell from $0.0000145 on Saturday to $0.0000131 at the time of this writing, marking a 7% decline.

The K9 Finance (KNINE) token decreased from $0.00000287 to $0.00000257, representing a 10% drop. Meanwhile, ShibaSwap’s token, BONE, has experienced a 38% decline since Sunday, falling from $0.31 to $0.19.

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Co-founder of THORChain loses $1.35 million in DPRK attack

The Shibarium exploit comes after another smaller-scale attack targeting the personal wallet of THORChain co-founder John-Paul Thorbjornsen (JP Thor). On-chain investigator ZachXBT reported on Friday that Thorbjornsen’s wallet was compromised following a scam on a meeting call via Telegram.