Hedera Blockchain Confirms ‘Technical Irregularities’ in a Suspected Exploit

Hedera, a distributed ledger transaction public blockchain, was hacked Thursday in an exploit that affected the platform’s decentralized applications (dApps). The incident was confirmed by HBAR Foundation, the non-profit behind the blockchain.

“We have noticed network irregularities impacting various Hedera dApps and their users. The Foundation is in communication with impacted partners, and we’re monitoring and working to help resolve the issue,” the team posted on Twitter.

Some dApps that took to social media to caution their users of the incident include SaucerSwap Labs, a decentralized exchange, which encouraged its users to pull out their funds immediately. The DEX added that the attackers targeted decompiling processes in smart contracts and had also hit pangolin and HeliSwap pools containing wrapped tokens. Decompiling in smart contracts is a process of turning compiled bytecode into their initial human readable code.

Other affected dApps

Also affected is Hashport, a bridge project on Hedera, which had to halt services following the ‘irregularities.’ In response to the situation, Hashport announced that it had stopped bridging to safeguard its users’ assets. HBAR Foundation will make further communication on the matter.

Following the attack, the total value locked (TVL) in Hedera tanked 31.95% in the past day to $25 million, according to data from the aggregator platform DeFiLlama. Native HBAR token ranked #33 in the crypto listing, is down 17% on the weekly chart, trading at $0.05608 at press time.

Hedera uses a consensus mechanism called Hashgraph to accommodate more transactions than its proof of work counterparts. The blockchain is an enterprise-grade network built for scalability, speed, and openness, leveraging the proof of stake consensus mechanism, and secured by validators staking the native tokens.