Acala, Polkadot’s decentralized finance network, had its protocols tampered with by hackers, causing it to pass an urgent vote to suspend operations until the issue is resolved. The news came just a few hours after Bryan Chen, Co-Founder, and CTO of Acala Network, discussed the importance of open-source code in preventing crypto hacks.
In yet another instance of crypto hacking, Acala was targeted by a security breach, with the hackers tampering with its protocols to issue over 1B aUSD tokens using an error in the transaction pool.
Crypto security analyst 0xTaysama - IYKYK theorizes the hack was caused by a bug in the iBTC/aUSD pool, and claims the perpetrator "tied an Ethereum account to Acala and was funded from Binance."
As a result, the price of the aUSD token plummeted by over 70% within minutes after the hacker issued the aUSD tokens. Fortunately, the stablecoin stabilized considerably after a few hours and is currently priced at $0.76, down by 25% within the last 24 hours.
Acala’s staff confirmed the vulnerability was due to a configuration issue of the Honzon protocol and swiftly passed a vote to halt the platform’s operations. The last update from Acala reveals that the team is working to mitigate the issue and will report once the platform resumes normal operations.
Astar Network, the multi-chain smart contract platform that connects Layer 1 blockchains with the Polkadot ecosystem, reveals that the Acala hack has not impacted its operations. Furthermore, the Astar Network has disabled aUSD imports from the Acala Network in light of the recent hack.
