Saurik
Hacker finds way to clone infinite crypto coins – preferring to get rich the legal way
Crypto coins are currently a very popular target for hackers (icon image)
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The value of crypto coins like Ethereum comes from the fact that there is a finite supply of them. The well-known hacker Saurik has now managed to generate an infinite number of them. The fact that he reported it now made him a millionaire.
Hardly a week goes by without some report of stolen cryptocurrencies making the rounds. Just last week, billions of euros worth of stolen bitcoin were found from a New York couple. However, the potential of a recently published hack would have been even greater: an error could generate an infinite number of Ethereum coins.
That’s what hacker Jay Freeman, better known by his online nickname Saurik, was pointing out. He came across the gap when he was dealing with so-called nanopayments. These are systems that are based on cryptocurrencies to enable payments. And in the system of the service provider Optimism, Saurik discovered the decisive error: he could create an infinite number of ethers himself.
Attack above the second level
This is not intended for Ethereum itself or for Optimism. In both systems, the coin’s value is only secured by the fact that there is a limited number of them. In the Ethereum blockchain itself, they are painstakingly created individually using complex calculations, known as mining, and only multiply slowly. With Optimism, the amount is secured differently: In order to be able to transfer an ether into the payment system, it must first be handed over to the operators via the blockchain as a deposit. Only then will a new ether be released in the system. And it was precisely this process that Saurik was able to overturn.
By mistake, he was able to persuade the Optimism network to issue his real ether on the blockchain without deleting his equivalent on Optimism. So he produced new, independent ethers on the network. The Ethereum blockchain itself was not affected by the hack, Saurik himself speaks of an “L2 hack” that only affects the higher-level payment level. Because he could exchange his newly generated ethers for real ones on other networks, he could still have taken a gigantic amount of money out of the network and at the same time destroyed its value until discovered, explains in a blog post.
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With honesty to the millionaire
But that doesn’t fit the Jay Freeman that the hacker community has loved for decades. Saurik made a name for himself in the early days of the iPhone, when he brought a way to the smartphone, even before Apple, to install more than the pre-installed apps. Since then, his app store alternative Cydia has been firmly established in the so-called jailbreak scene. Saurik himself has repeatedly fought for open software systems and the possibility of repairing his devices himself.
So it’s not surprising that the hacker didn’t unscrupulously exploit his find, but rather reported it to the Optimism operators. It was probably more worthwhile for him than he had hoped: as a thank you for the disclosure, they paid him two million dollars as a reward. The competing Boba Network added another $100,000. “The reward for my Ethereum L2 hack is now $2,100,042. (Isn’t that even a new record?)”, said Saurik on Twitter. Sometimes honesty does pay off.
Source:Saurik
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