OpenSea, one of the largest NFT exchanges Compensates affected users with more than $1.8 million after the latest vulnerability was discovered on the platform.
Back on January 24, 2022, some OpenSea users saw their precious NFTs being sold at the lowest prices. A hacker who took advantage of a flaw in OpenSea’s list process to buy those NFTs at a discount of nearly 98% and resell them for a much higher price.
followreportof Elliptic, a blockchain analytics firm, found that The OpenSea exploit is the result of a flaw in the way asset lists are handled on the platform.
OpenSea is built on the Ethereum blockchain known for its wallet-harming fees. Therefore, to reduce the amount of money spent on transactions, OpenSea handles most functions off-chain until those transactions have to be sent. also blockchain for settlement
In order to list, NFT sellers on the platform are required to sign off-chain data to verify the amount they wish to sell their NFTs to. However, problems arise when sellers decide to send a message to the blockchain to cancel the list.
to avoid paying expensive fees The seller simply transfers the NFT to another wallet. This makes the initial offer invalid as NFT is no longer in OpenSea.
Things get more complicated when sellers transfer assets back to the OpenSea wallet, when the value of NFTs increases dramatically over time. But since the default list process is not removed from the blockchain. This makes it possible for anyone to purchase NFT at an initial price. which is certainly what the offender sees and execute attacks using bots to scan the network for NFTs with low pending orders and buy them.
Elliptic said it had identified at least five attackers involved in the hack. This includes users. jpegdegenlove That made at least 340 Ether worth over $800,000 at current prices through exploitation.
Following the exploit, OpenSea has introduced a new list manager on the platform. This allows users to effectively monitor active and inactive lists. And there is a one-click option to cancel unused items.
NFT Markets also contacted affected users and paid them back by Robert Garcia talks to Bloomberg. One of the victims of the attack, Robert said, his Mutant Ape NFT was sold for 4.7 Ether (about $11,300) on Sunday.
Robert noted that he emailed OpenSea immediately after the sale. and received a response from them on Thursday offering him 13.8 Ether back worth over $35,000 at current prices.