EtherCrash "Cold Wallet" Compromised
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EtherCrash is an online gambling website which supposedly had funds stolen from a cold wallet. Details could not be located regarding the exact nature of the breach, and it appears that the company has no means to repay the funds of investors.
No further tweets were found on Twitter after October 3rd, 2020, while the website appears to remain online.
About EtherCrash
From EtherCrash's website homepage[1]:
Ethercrash.io is the most established and largest gambling game for Ethereum. Based on Bustabit and provably fair with a low house edge. You can deposit with either Bitcoin or Ethereum, give it a try today!
Homepage:[1]
"EtherCrash's outcome can be proven as fair. There are third party scripts you can use to verify the game hashes and calculate the results." "Every game starts from 0x and counts up, you can watch your wager amount being multiplied in your bet area and choose to cash out at anytime but beware if you wait too long it can crash and you will lose your entire bet."
"Increase your Ethereum holdings by investing into the bankroll of Ethercrash. By being part of the growing bankroll you can monitor your investment and see its growth or decline whenever you choose. By investing you ensure we can also have a higher max bet limit. The bankroll is used for paying out players who want to withdraw their winnings. Invest into Ethercrash today and see your money grow!"
The Reality
TBD
What Happened
"On October 26, 2020 Ethercrash cold wallet was compromised with 6378 ETH stolen."
| Date | Event | Description |
|---|---|---|
| October 26th, 2020 | Cold Wallet Compromised | "On October 26, 2020 Ethercrash cold wallet was compromised with 6378 ETH stolen." |
| October 26th, 2020 4:37:00 PM MDT | Twitter Thread By Alon Gal | Twitter user UnderTheBreach (Alon Gal) reports on the attack and provides a screenshot of the original Discord post[2]. |
| November 3rd, 2020 8:04:27 PM MST | Blockcast Article | A Blockcast article includes the EtherCrash incident along with another total of 29 significant security incidents in October 2020, under the 3 involving wallets, according to data from the PeckShield situational awareness platform. Other incidents were the hacking of the WLEO contract, an arbitrage attack on Harvest.finance, a suspected theft by UniCats, and a lightning loan security vulnerability in yearn.finance, the phishing attacks on Ledger, and hackers stealing $22 million from Electrum users[3]. |
| November 10th, 2020 9:45:58 PM MST | Blockchain Threat Intelligence Article | Blockchain Threat Intelligence includes the EtherCrash incident along with others in their summary of Week 44 of 2020[4]. |
| January 8th, 2021 3:26:09 PM MST | Blockchain Threat Intelligence Article | Blockchain Threat Intelligence includes the EtherCrash incident along with others in their summary of 2020[5]. |
Technical Details
6378 ETH was stolen from the EtherCrash "cold" wallet.
Exchange of Funds
"The stolen funds were exchanged to DAI on Uniswap." "The company said in a notice [graphic below] on the proprietary freeware instant messaging and VoIP application and digital distribution platform Discord that its cold wallet had been compromised and two large withdrawals made." "EtherCrash provided the addresses to which the transfers were made and said it had changed its sweeping address."
Total Amount Lost
Reported as $2.5M:[3]
The total amount lost has been estimated at $2,500,000 USD.
Immediate Reactions
Announcement on Discord
"It is reported that EtherCrash has issued a notice on Discord in which it mentioned that the EtherCrash cold wallet was stolen and there were two large withdrawals. EtherCrash stated that it will compensate users for their property losses, but it will take some time because the losses are more serious."[1]
HudsonRock Reaction
"Recently, AlonGal, the chief technology officer of the cybercrime intelligence company HudsonRock, tweeted that on October 27, the EtherCrash cold wallet that claimed to be "the most mature and largest gambling game in Ethereum" was stolen, with a loss of about 2.5 million U.S. dollars." "A cold wallet is one that has never been connected to the Internet. Alon Gal, chief technology officer of cyber crime intelligence company Hudson Rock, posted the notice on Twitter."
"Asked whether there had been other thefts from EtherCrash, Gal told iTWire that he had been referring to other hacks at other companies in his tweet which read: "Another hack of around $2,500,000 happened today on EtherCrash." "He said he was referring to the attack at decentralised finance player Harvest Finance (see tweet below) which lost about US$24 million last week."
Ultimate Outcome
The incident was includes in SlowMist[6].
Planned Repayment of Funds
"Our initial plan on repaying the investors of EtherCrash is not to take any commission and have these funds pay back the investors directly," the notice said, adding, "however this may take some time." The company said it was open to ideas "on how we can make things right".
Total Amount Recovered
There do not appear to have been any funds recovered in this case.
What funds were recovered? What funds were reimbursed for those affected users?
Ongoing Developments
What parts of this case are still remaining to be concluded?
General Prevention Policies
Having a wallet managed through a single key held by a single individual leaves a system vulnerable to any mistakes that individual may make. It is significantly more secure to have the funds in a proper multi-signature wallet, where multiple parties must be breached or participate for funds to go missing.
Individual Prevention Policies
No specific policies for individual prevention have yet been identified in this case.
For the full list of how to protect your funds as an individual, check our Prevention Policies for Individuals guide.
Platform Prevention Policies
Policies for platforms to take to prevent this situation have not yet been selected in this case.
For the full list of how to protect your funds as a financial service, check our Prevention Policies for Platforms guide.
Regulatory Prevention Policies
No specific regulatory policies have yet been identified in this case.
For the full list of regulatory policies that can prevent loss, check our Prevention Policies for Regulators guide.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 EtherCrash Homepage "A Social Ethereum Gambling Game -- ethercrash.io" (Sep 2, 2021)
- ↑ UnderTheBreach - "Another hack of around $2,500,000 happened today on EtherCrash" - Twitter Archive October 27th, 2020 1:25:29 AM MDT (Aug 3, 2021)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 PeckShield: 4 DeFi security incidents occurred in October, 15 incidents of cryptocurrency fraud - Blockcast (Sep 2, 2021)
- ↑ BlockThreat - Week 44, 2020 - Blockchain Threat Intelligence (Sep 2, 2021)
- ↑ BlockThreat - 2020: A Year in Review - Blockchain Threat Intelligence (Aug 3, 2021)
- ↑ SlowMist Hacked - SlowMist Zone (Sep 2, 2021)