Stars Arena, a web3 social media platform, has announced that it has recovered almost all of the cryptocurrency that was stolen in an exploit on October 7th. The platform was able to retrieve 90% of the 266,000 Avalanche (AVAX) that was stolen, which was worth approximately $3 million at the time. As part of the agreement to recover the funds, Stars Arena agreed to give a 27,610 AVAX bounty, worth nearly $257,000, to the person responsible for the exploit. The bounty also included compensation for 1,000 AVAX, worth over $9,000, which the exploiter seemed to have lost in a bridge.
Stars Arena made the announcement through a Twitter post on October 11th, stating that they had reached an agreement with the individual responsible for the security breach and that the funds had been returned in exchange for the bounty fee and compensation for the lost AVAX. The platform also mentioned that they had written a new smart contract and were in the process of finalizing an audit of the contract before placing the returned funds and launching.
Prior to this exploit, Stars Arena had alerted its community about the security breach on October 7th, describing it as a major incident where funds were drained due to a vulnerability in its smart contract. After the breach, Stars Arena secured funding to address the issue and hired a development team to conduct a full security audit. However, the team has not yet provided specific details on how the exploit took place.
A few days before this major exploit, Stars Arena experienced a smaller breach on October 5th, where hackers managed to steal approximately $2,000. The exploit was attributed to the platform’s developers overlooking a vulnerable price function in the smart contract, which allowed the exploiter to sell user shares for nothing and receive AVAX in return. Stars Arena claimed to have patched the vulnerability following this incident.
Stars Arena’s main competitor, Friend.tech, has also faced targeted SIM-swap attacks recently. As a result, Friend.tech has implemented additional security features to mitigate these attempts.
In conclusion, Stars Arena has successfully recovered the majority of the cryptocurrency that was stolen in an exploit earlier this month. The platform reached an agreement with the individual responsible for the breach, returning 90% of the funds in exchange for a bounty fee and compensation for lost AVAX. Stars Arena has also taken measures to enhance security by writing a new smart contract and conducting a thorough audit.
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