OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, has reportedly suffered a front-end attack resulting in the loss of 347 Ether [worth approximately $800k].
The attack was initially noted by blockchain security firm PeckShield. Bringing to light the same, their latest tweet noted,
“It appears that OpenSea has a front-end issue and the exploiter gained about 332 Ether”
The corresponding transaction on Etherscan verified the same.
The wallet used to execute the attack, notably, received 10 ETH from the anonymous wallet service, TornadoCash. Post that, the received Ether was wrapped to wETH and was then used for the attack.
An hour before PeckShield’s announcement, several users noticed that it was possible to buy various NFTs from OpenSea using prices previously listed on Rarible.
Well, the crypto space has been susceptible to attacks and exploits ever since the beginning. Crypto.com, a major exchange, was targeted quite recently. Apart from the 4.6K ETH coins, it is speculated that an additional 444 BTC were also stolen from the platform. The targeted accounts were, however, reimbursed later.
The current OpenSea exploit did not require any work with backend or blockchain hacking. The exploiting process was reportedly similar to arbitrage trading. Here, professional speculators usually take advantage of the difference in the price of an asset price on two different exchanges. They simply buy assets from one platform at a cheap price only to sell them on the other at a higher valuation.
The user simply used the imbalance between the two orders on different platforms to gain value. The same wouldn’t have been possible if the NFT platform’s front-end structure was not vulnerable.
OpenSea’s official word on this matter is still awaited.