Smart Loans has invested $440,000 worth of crypto in a flash loan exploit
Web3 loan application and profit aggregator Wise Loans has been exposed to 170 Ether (ETH), currently worth $440,000, in an apparent exploit on January 12, according to multiple security experts. In order to carry out the exploit, he may have used a verbal price with a flash loan.
Blockchain data shows that the attack took place at 07:29 pm UTC. The attacker used an unverified contract with an address ending in d82c to withdraw the funds. Several tokens were transferred into this contract, including $9,000 worth of USD Coin (USD), $2,000 worth of Tether (USDT), $5,000 worth of DAI, 18.51 Wrapped Ether (WETH) ($47.694) and several Pendle Financial related tokens.
As part of the exploit, the attacker borrowed 1,110 Lido Staked Ether (stETH) tokens ($2.9 million) from the AAVE lending protocol. Exploiters often use flash loans to manipulate the term rate.
Related: What are Flash Loans in DeFi?
Anonymous blockchain security researcher Spreek warned the crypto community about the attack on X, saying “Wise Lending appears to have been exploited for ~170 eth.”
Wise loan seems to be exploited for ~170 eth pic.twitter.com/FKivuNIKZV
— Speak (@spraakaway) January 12, 2024
In a response to their own post, Spreek speculated that the vulnerability may be related to a new Pendle Finance startup token. Another security researcher shared the sentiment, “Another day, another exploit,” the officer notes. According to the official notes, the vulnerability may have been caused by a 7% price swing between stETH and Ether (ETH) in a certain pool, which in turn was the “AAVE v2 stETH flash loan”.
2024 has just begun, but decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols have lost at least $5 million to exploiters. On January 3rd, Radiant Capital hit over $4.5 million. The next day, liquid manager Gamma Protocol lost over $400,000 in exploits.
In the year More than $1.8 billion will be lost to crypto hacking, fraud and exploitation by 2023, according to blockchain security platform Sertic.
