MAKER DAO

DESCRIPTION OF EVENTS

"A better, smarter currency. Dai can be used by anyone, anywhere, anytime." "MakerDAO is a decentralized organization dedicated to bringing stability to the cryptocurrency economy. The Maker Protocol employs a two-token system. The first being, Dai, a collateral-backed stablecoin that offers stability. The Maker Foundation and the MakerDAO community believe that a decentralized stablecoin is required to have any business or individual realize the advantages of digital money. Second, there is MKR, a governance token that is used by stakeholders to maintain the system and manage Dai. MKR token holders are the decision-makers of the Maker Protocol, supported by the larger public community and various other external parties."

"The Maker Protocol, also known as the Multi-Collateral Dai (MCD) system, allows users to generate Dai by leveraging collateral assets approved by “Maker Governance.” Maker Governance is the community organized and operated process of managing the various aspects of the Maker Protocol. Dai is a decentralized, unbiased, collateral-backed cryptocurrency soft-pegged to the US Dollar. Resistant to hyperinflation due to its low volatility, Dai offers economic freedom and opportunity to anyone, anywhere."

"Since Maker is decentralized, it can’t use credit scores to verify the creditworthiness of its borrowers. Hence, loans on the platform are overcollateralized, meaning that a borrower supplies more assets that they can take out." "MakerDAO is known as the creator of dai (DAI), the decentralized stablecoin currently beloved by yield farmers. DAI is created with debt. Users put ETH or other crypto-assets up as collateral on the Maker platform to then withdraw a portion of the value of those assets in the form of brand-new DAI." "To get back their collateral, users must repay the DAI they borrowed plus whatever interest the loan has accrued (in MakerDAO parlance this is the “stability fee,” but it’s just a variable interest rate). MakerDAO enforces the DAI price by liquidating collateral if its value falls below the minimum threshold to maintain proper collateralization. For ETH, that’s 150%, but most users put in a lot more ETH than the minimum." "If the collateral value goes below a certain threshold, the loan is marked as undercollateralized, and liquidators can participate in an auction to liquidate the loan for a 13% reward."

"Inferno Drainer (Fake_Phishing187019) set the owner address of a Maker vault to 0x5d4b2a02c59197eb2cae95a6df9fe27af60459d4 and minted 55,473,618 Dai tokens (~$55M) to it."

"The theft was possible due to the attacker gaining access to EOA 0xf2B889437F243396b29E829908b5d8ebE2e13048Ttthe wallet was used to transfer ownership of DSProxy #166,776 to 0x0000db5c8B030ae20308ac975898E09741e70000 11 hours ago at Aug-20-2024 05:40:47 PM UTC."

"Jingyi Guo, an analyst at Blocksec, highlighted the likelihood that the victim had signed a phishing transaction, given their failed attempts to invoke the DSProxy after the ownership change."

"Security firm Blocksec confirmed this to The Block, adding that the attacker lured the victim into signing a TX to change the vault owner and then executed a TX to drain the vault. It explained that on-chain data suggested the Maker Vault owner likely assigned ownership of the DSProxy to the address labeled Fake_Phishing187019 on Etherscan during the phishing transaction."

"Subsequently, Fake_Phishing187019 transferred ownership to the address 0x5D4b2, which is now handling further withdrawals and potential money laundering activities, including the withdrawal of the victim’s DAI."

"The victim tried to invoke DSProxy. However, since they were no longer the owner address of DSProxy, the invocation failed. Given this, the likelihood of the victim signing a phishing transaction is higher than the possibility of their private key being compromised," Blocksec analyst Jingyi Guo said.

"The whale, perhaps sensing something was amiss, attempted to withdraw their funds to safer waters."

"But it was too late, the ownership had already changed and the transaction failed.

A digital fortune had evaporated in the blink of an eye, serving as a very expensive lesson in the dangers lurking in crypto's deep waters."

MakerDAO is behind the large stablecoin DAI, which is backed by cryptocurrency assets stored in vaults. A large whale and the owner of one of the largest MakerDAO vaults was successfully phished with a transaction that sent ownership of their vault to a new wallet address. Once the ownership had been taken over, the vault was used to mint 55.4M additional DAI, which were then transferred to the attacker. Some of the DAI were converted to Ethereum. There is no word on who the victim was or any plans to investigate or reclaim the funds.

Rekt - Whale Hunter's Payday (Aug 26)
Telegram: Contact @investigations (Aug 26)
@certikalert Twitter (Aug 26)
https://www.theblock.co/post/312326/hacking-55-million-dai-inferno-drainer (Aug 26)
@lookonchain Twitter (Aug 26)
Fake_Phishing440132 | Address 0x5d4b2a02c59197eb2cae95a6df9fe27af60459d4 | Etherscan  (Aug 26)
Fake_Phishing442896 | Address 0xdd6397104d57533e507bd571ac88c4b24852bce9 | Etherscan  (Aug 26)
The Maker Protocol White Paper | Feb 2020 (Jul 26)
MakerDAO | An Unbiased Global Financial System (Jun 24)
A brief history of Stablecoins (Part 1) | BitMEX Blog (Oct 28)

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