A blockchain security company called PeckShieldAlert recently said that Nexera, a decentralized finance (DeFi) system, has taken 32.5 million NXRA tokens out of circulation for good after a major hack.
Cyvers, a forensics company, discovered the exploit for the first time on August 7. It involved a strange transaction that could be tracked back to Nexera’s proxy contract. Early investigations showed that the attacker had changed the contract to give themselves more rights and then used the withdraw admin function to steal $1.5 million worth of NXRA coins.
Hacker Launders Stolen Tokens
The hacker then exchanged the stolen money for Ethereum (ETH) and tried to wash it through cryptocurrency mixers like Tornado Cash, which is a typical thing for hackers to do after thefts like this. To make things even better, Nexera later said that it had successfully frozen 32.5 million NXRA coins.
The attacker only got $440,000 worth of NXRA tokens, as explained in the report that was made after the event. The story also said that the smart contracts for the protocol were safe and that the project would keep its current token address. Nexera said they would write a full report about what happened soon.
The release says that the exploit is part of a larger, more coordinated attack that is aimed at many projects and protocols. As a result, the Nexera team told its community to stop trading. Trading and withdrawals for NXRA tokens have also been stopped on KuCoin and MEXC, as that’s where the hacker had interacted with addresses linked to exploits.
It is the second time that Nexera has been the victim of a scam. Before, when the project was called AllianceBlock, 110 million ALBT tokens were lost because of a flaw in the Bonq decentralized borrowing system.
The event comes after another major hack the day before, in which a “white hat” hacker targeted Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge and stole 4,000 ETH, which is worth almost $10 million, using a Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) bug. The money was returned the next day, though.
The Nexera team’s quick steps have helped lessen the damage, but the full effects of the exploit and the specifics of the coordinated attack are still being looked into.
