A hacker has made off with $2 million in bug bounty after finding an alarming vulnerability with the Ethereum network. This bug could have been very bad if it had been found by black hat hackers who could have exploited the digital asset for billions of dollars worth of ETH. Instead, a ‘grey hat’ hacker popularly known as Saurik informed the Ethereum team of the vulnerability, netting himself a sizable reward in return. Finding The Vulnerability On Ethereum Hacker Saurik had found the vulnerability on Optimism, an Ethereum layer 2 rollup solution. The hacker himself published a report as to how he found the vulnerability on the solution. Looking through nano payments protocols on the rollup, he had found a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to withdraw unbridled a ‘virtually unlimited’ amount of ETH from the solution. Related Reading | TA: Ethereum Overcome Hurdles, Why 100 SMA Is The Key It was similar to the attack method deployed on popular smart contracts blockchain Solana that resulted in the $353 million hacks on Wormhole. Optimism, like Wormhole, mint what are known as “Wrapped Ether.” Users deposit their Ether on the smart contract to basically serve as collateral and they are even these tokens that only exist on Optimism’s network. They then use nano payments protocol to make transactions faster and quicker. ETH recovers above $3,100 | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com Saurik who is famously known fo...
