Beanstalk Farm, a leading stablecoin protocol based on Ethereum, suffered an online attack on Sunday that led the protocol to lose $182 million worth of crypto assets.
Beanstalk Farms Exploited For $182 Million
The Beanstalk online exploit was brought to light by security and analytics firm Peckshield which confirmed the details, adding that the hacker went away with nearly $80 million worth of crypto assets.
It was later found that the hacker made use of a flash loan technique to embezzle the funds out of the protocol. The hacker first took flash loans worth $1 billion out from Aave which enabled the hacker to acquire a large amount of Beanstalk’s native token BEAN. A large number of accumulated BEAN tokens allowed the hacker to procure 67% of the protocol’s governance and helped the attacker move funds to a private Ethereum wallet.
Flash loans have notoriously been called a hacker tool and have played instrumental roles in exploiting several crypto organizations in the domain. In simpler terms, a flash loan is an uncollateralized loan that involves lending money to a borrower. Flash loans utilize smart contracts’ ability to execute transfers and have been used extensively to perform crypto exploits in the past.
PeckShield also tweeted details concerning the crypto breakdown that the hacker was able to get away with, which includes looting $80 million in Ether and BEAN, while the entire protocol suffered an exploit worth $182 million. The news of the Beanstalk exploits adversely impacted the prices of its native token BEAN which registered a notable plunge of nearly 46% at press time, according to CoinMarketCap.
