Another One Bites The Dust: KyberSwap DEX Suffers $46 Million Exploit

Key Insights

• KyberSwap, a decentralized exchange aggregator, has been exploited for $46 million.
• The attacker stole various crypto assets, including Wrapped Ether, Lido-staked Ether, and Arbitrum.
• The attacker also left a taunting message on the Ethereum network, saying that negotiations would start in a few hours.
• The TVL on KyberSwap has dropped from $105 million to $8.2 million as a result of the attack.
• The KyberSwap hack is the latest in a series of DeFi exploits that have plagued the industry in 2023.

According to recent reports, a new decentralized exchange has just been hit with a massive hack.

The liquidity pools of KyberSwap, a decentralized exchange aggregator have now been drained of $46 million worth of crypto assets like Wrapped Ether, Lido-staked Ether and Arbitrum from several chains.

How The Attack Happened

According to an announcement tweet on Thursday this week, the Kyber Network team urged users to withdraw their funds from KyberSwap Elastic, as the protocol was under attack.

Blockchain analysts weighing in on the conversation confirmed that the attacker exploited the Kyber Network using a distributed attack across several chains and protocols.

The exploiter wallet address (0xC9B8…50c6) was also identified and tracked by the community and was discovered to still be active.

How Much Was Actually Stolen?

According to data from Arkham Intelligence, the attacker managed to steal more than $40 million in various crypto assets from KyberSwap, including $20 million in Wrapped Ether (wETH), $7 million in wrapped Lido-staked Ether (wstETH), and $4 million in Arbitrum (ARB).

Upon stealing these funds, the cryptocurrencies were also swapped for other tokens, like USDC, DAI and WBTC, using other DeFi platforms like Uniswap and SushiSwap.

Not only that, the attacker also left a taunting message on the Ethereum network, saying:

"negotiations will start In a few hours when I am fully rested. Thank you"

KyberSwap TVL Tanks

As a result of this attack, DefiLlama shows that the TVL (or total value locked) on KyberSwap has plummeted by 80% in a matter of hours, as users withdrew their funds or lost them to the hack.

The TVL on KyberSwap has dropped from $105 million to $8.2 million since the hack.

The hack also affected the price of Kyber Network Crystal (KNC), the native token of the Kyber Network which had already been in a price rejection from $0.9.

KNC has declined by more than 4% according to CoinMarketCap as the news of the exploit spread, to $0.7138.

Furthermore, this is not the first security incident that KyberSwap has encountered. A weakness in the protocol's smart contracts was discovered by the developers sometime in April, even though that incident was less serious, and no funds were lost.

The state of DeFi security

The KyberSwap hack is the latest in a series of DeFi exploits that have plagued the industry in 2023.

According to data from CertiK, as of mid-November, losses in November sat at $173 million as of the 17^th day of the month.

CertiK also noted that even then, November already had the 4^th highest crypto loss of the year.

DefiLlama also shows that so far, about $7.5 billion has been lost to hacks and exploits.

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