Hackers Stole $100 Million USD From Vulcan Forged NFT Marketplace
On December 13 2021, in an announcement via Twitter, Vulcan Forged said that an attacker had stolen almost $100 million worth of PYR tokens from Vulcan Forged's NFT marketplace. The investigation has been started and the team will replace the funds stolen.
Vulcan Forged is an NFT marketplace that announced Dec 13 that 148 wallets containing its PYR token had been compromised. The attacker stole more than 4.5 million PYR coins, which is just over $100 million.
PYR prices tank
Although the team is currently working to replace the stolen PYR tokens, the investigation has just begun. Since the theft announcement, the PYR token has fallen by more than 10% and continues to bleed.
Funds in the Treasury will replace the PYR tokens. It is also focusing on moving towards a fully decentralized wallet setup. However, the details of this were not discussed.
The team provided details about the wallet that was used in the attack, and also reached out to exchanges to blacklist this address. It is possible that the owner provided KYC details for the wallet on the exchange. This should prompt an investigation.
Vulcan Forged offers an NFT ecosystem with a DEX and a dashboard to manage assets. It also has a marketplace where you can sell NFTs. It is focused on blockchain gaming, which has seen a lot of popularity in the last year. With the success of games such as Axie Infinity or The Sandbox, the play-to-earn concept has been rediscovered.
NFT and DeFi markets remain at risk from attacks
Cryptospace thefts continue to plague investors and teams. There have been many attacks in 2021. CipherTrace, an intelligence company that specializes in cryptocurrency, published a report saying that DeFi-related crimes reached an all-time high during the first seven months 2021.
It was estimated that $474 million in total funds were lost over that time. This is despite the fact that attacks on the DeFi market were growing as the niche grew. BitMart was the latest victim of an attack, with $196 million of its funds stolen in December 2021.
Attackers use flash loans as one of their most popular exploits. This year, such attacks are quite common. Cream Finance was the victim of a third flash loan attack in this year's history, resulting in a loss of $130 million.
