\n<\/p>\n
CEO Evgeny Gaevoy Says Firm Remains Solvent<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Crypto market maker Wintermute has lost $160M in a hack that targeted its DeFi operations early Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have a [market maker] agreement with Wintermute, your funds are safe,\u201d CEO Evgeny Gaevoy said<\/a> on Twitter. \u201cThere will be a disruption in our services today and potentially for [the] next few days and will get back to normal after.\u201d<\/p>\n Mudit Gupta, Polygon\u2019s head of information security, said the attacker likely exploited a bug<\/a> in Profanity, a program that generates \u201cvanity\u201d wallet addresses.<\/p>\n Like license plates on vehicles, crypto addresses are a randomized string of numbers and letters. With Profanity, however, users are able to generate addresses that appear less random and more legible to human eyes.<\/p>\n In Wintermute\u2019s case, it was using a Profanity-generated address that started<\/a> with several zeroes. <\/p>\n Anton Bukov, the co-founder of 1inch, the DeFi protocol that first detailed the bug, said such an address could be exploited within seconds<\/a> using \u201caverage home hardware.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Gaevoy said the address had been generated to save<\/a> on Ethereum\u2019s notoriously high gas fees, though it was not clear how it would help in that regard.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gaevoy and Wintermute representatives did not immediately respond to The Defiant\u2019s request for comment Tuesday.<\/p>\n DEX aggregator 1inch detailed<\/a> the bug on Thursday, and Wintermute appears to have heeded its warning that Profanity users move their digital assets from vanity wallet addresses, according to Gupta.<\/p>\n But Wintermute made a crucial mistake, Gupta added \u2013 it forgot to remove the vanity address as an administrator of the smart contract the hacker drained.<\/p>\n According to crypto analytics firm Arkham Intelligence, the hack took place within a 45-minute window and is the seventh-largest<\/a> in DeFi history.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gaevoy said<\/a> on Twitter that Wintermute remains solvent with more than $300M in remaining equity.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you are a lender to Wintermute, again, we are solvent, but if you feel safer to recall the loan, we can absolutely do that,\u201d he wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nVanity Address<\/h4>\n
Profanity Bug<\/h4>\n
Firm Remains Solvent<\/h4>\n