The 5 most costly ethereum security bugs
Even if you haven’t been glancing over as many blockchain or cryptocurrency headlines recently as it used to be the case just about half a year ago, the surrounding technologies are ever evolving and require just as much if not more attention than ever. In fact, adoption increases every day and so does dependability on an ecosystem that’s just trying to find its place in the market and shape itself.
While early adopters on the playground were frustrated and/or had their wealth gone overnight in pasts breaches, they might still be the more forgiving kind. Security needs to improve steadily to keep the momentum going and keep the credibility of new technologies in check and win over the trust of the mainstream.
The past has shown that great things are possible with developments like Ethereum, but the hype and the stress that comes with it has left the security topic on a stop on the priority list, where it shouldn’t have been.
Here’s the top 5 most costly ethereum security bugs
1 November 2017: ‘$300m in cryptocurrency’ accidentally lost forever due to bug
More than $300m of cryptocurrency has been lost after a series of bugs in a popular digital wallet service led a curious developer to, without intention, take control of and then lock up the funds, according to reports.
Source:https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/08/cryptocurrency-300m-dollars-stolen-bug-ether
2 June 2016: Decentralized Autonomous Organization Hack
A vulnerability in the DAO code resulted in $60 million in Ether being stolen and is the main reason for the hard fork in Ethereum that took place in mid 2016. The new branch of the Ethereum blockchain is what became newly known as Ethereum, whereas the legacy chain is still around under the name Ethereum Classic.
Source: https://www.coindesk.com/dao-attacked-code-issue-leads-60-million-ether-theft/
3 July 2017 $30 Million: Ether Reported Stolen Due to Parity Wallet Breach
Around 150,000 ethers, at the time worth ≈$30 million, have been reported by the company Parity as stolen (data confirmed by Etherscan.io). As reported, the issue is the result of a bug in a specific multi-signature contract known as wallet.sol. Etherscan.io data suggests the issues harm was reduced, however, as about 377,000 ethers that were potentially vulnerable to the issue were regained by the white hat hackers.
Source: https://www.coindesk.com/30-million-ether-reported-stolen-parity-wallet-breach/
4 July 2017: CoinDash Hack
CoinDash had a disastrous start into 2017 when a hacker manipulated the address posted on CoinDash’s website telling initial coin offering investors where to exchange Ether for CoinDash tokens. The hackers got away with $7 million in stolen Ether.
Source: https://www.coindesk.com/7-million-ico-hack-results-coindash-refund-offer/
5 February 2018: Ethereum Smart Contracts Vulnerable to Hacks: $4 Million in Ether at Risk
Around 34,200 current Ethereum smart contracts worth $4.4 million in ether are potentially vulnerable to hacking due to poor coding that contains bugs which could be prevented.
That’s the worrying outcome of a report from five researchers from the U.K. and Singapore which can be found as “Finding The Greedy, Prodigal, and Suicidal Contracts at Scale.”
Source: https://www.investopedia.com/news/ethereum-smart-contracts-vulnerable-hacks-4-million-ether-risk/
Security a top priority
With token prices potentially increasing further and the market size growing steadily the focus should likely be shifted more towards quality than quantity of new blockchain tech getting launched to avoid major security flaws. ChainSecurity hopes to contribute a significant part to eliminate aforementioned security flaws and breaches for the time to come.
