Sky Mavis reopens the Ronin Bridge after a $540 million hack in March.
In a recent update to the community, the Sky Mavis team stated that the pioneers of the Ronin Chain agreed to return their gamer’s lost funds.
Users can move assets from the Ronin Chain to the Ethereum Mainnet using the Ronin Bridge. Three months after the hack, on June 28, Sky Mavis reported that the Ronin Bridge had returned with a new and better look and that gamers would receive their lost asset.
Hacking the Ronin Bridge
The Ronin Bridge Hack is one of the biggest hacks in the crypto world. According to the US government, Lazarus, a cybercrime group based in North Korea, was responsible for the hack. Two anonymous insiders gave reports concerning the facade.
A senior engineer at Axie Infinity saw an ad for a job post—but it was a fake ad—and sent in an application. (there wasn’t a job)
Another source reported that these hackers delivered a fake application to Employees of Axie Infinity. The “company” interviewed many people and eventually hired some of them. The chosen person was offered an appointment with an excellent pay package.
When the “fake” company sent them the job offer in the form of a PDF, the engineer downloaded it. But unfortunately, the PDF had spyware on it, which got into Ronin’s system. The Block said that as soon as he opened the PDF, the spyware “took out four of the nine Ronin validators, leaving them with just one validator short of full control.”
The hackers used Axie’s DAO, where employees could still sign transactions, to pull off the heist.
In their “Post-Mortem,” the Ronin’s Bridge Operators said the following;
“The attacker was able to take control of four of the Sky Mavis validators and one of the Axie DAO validators to make fake withdrawals. As a result of these two transactions, Ronin Bridge lost 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5 million USDC.”
Sky Mavis raised the number of validator nodes from 9 to 11 one month after the hack. In a later blog post, they said they wanted to increase the number to 100 without mentioning how the hack happened for a good reason.
In November, there were 2.7 million active users and $214 million worth of trades on Axie Infinity (only for the in-game NFTs). Since then, the number of people playing the game has decreased.