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Hackers drain $100M off Solana-based DeFi platform Mango Markets

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Re: Hackers drain $100M off Solana-based DeFi platform Mango Markets

#31

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #27
mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More of a financial exploit, but don't conflate popular crypto sentiment from Twitter with what's possible. There is no reason regulation is required to prevent this on a automatic protocol level - but no surprise in the DeFi space if preventing this type of exploit isn't an active area of development.

Many of the recent bridge hacks were easily preventable. Unfortunately when the dev himself is the hacker, no amount of active development would fix these issues

I'm not sure if this has much specific relation to the Mango hack, but you raise an interesting point mentioning the possibility of a developer hacking his own network (who would be more qualified to do so?) - my broader point is this: there is a lot of incentive to get these platforms up and running, and not always a lot to build them safely and even less to truly audit them.

Often the developers make their money up front - in a way that's all that has to be said for the diligence developers of these protocols might have across longer time scales.

People are so concerned with making a quick buck they forget about subtleties like developer token lock up, third party audits, patience in general. But that's how markets go - fast money is more valuable than slow money and the price you pay is risk.

What the average Joe need to know is that DeFi, while capable of producing huge gains, also comes with a lot of risk both market-wise and protocol safety-wise.

Re: Hackers drain $100M off Solana-based DeFi platform Mango Markets

#32

Post by vkou »

Animats wrote: post #15

"According to Lim, the hacker funded the main account (account A) and offered 483mm units of $MNGO perps on the order book. The attacker then funded a second account (account B) with 5mm $USDC collateral. Then, he/she used the funds to buy the 483mm units of $MNGO perps (at a price of $0.0382 per unit). The perpetrator’s actions made $MNGO’s spot market price, reaching as high as $0.91. $MNGO/USD price of $0.91 per u…

> Nothing above looks illegal. In regulated markets, if something went from $0.03 to $0.91 in a short space of time, trading would be shut down.

Because the attacker owns both wallets, this is called a wash trade, which is something that has been illegal for over 80 years.

Re: Hackers drain $100M off Solana-based DeFi platform Mango Markets

#33

Post by randomfool »

bouncycastle wrote: post #20

Hate to be that guy, but someone has to say it... In this case the code worked as expected and the "attacker" played within the rules of the game. Except they "won" too much. That's not supposed to happen.

We’re laughing at the game creators. They’re the ones who decided to rewrite the rules, often with little understanding of economics.

Re: Hackers drain $100M off Solana-based DeFi platform Mango Markets

#34

Post by threeseed »

mmastrac wrote: post #3

If there's every a use for provably correct programs, it should be in crypto.

The problem is that you can't predict ahead of time every use case.

That's why today's financial system has the ability to manually revert back to a previous state if something gets wrong e.g. undo transactions, government bailouts etc.

Re: Hackers drain $100M off Solana-based DeFi platform Mango Markets

#35

Post by wmf »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #27
mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More of a financial exploit, but don't conflate popular crypto sentiment from Twitter with what's possible. There is no reason regulation is required to prevent this on a automatic protocol level - but no surprise in the DeFi space if preventing this type of exploit isn't an active area of development.

Many of the recent bridge hacks were easily preventable. Unfortunately when the dev himself is the hacker, no amount of active development would fix these issues

That's what auditing is for.

Re: Hackers drain $100M off Solana-based DeFi platform Mango Markets

#38

Post by e63f67dd-065b »

Code is law working out real well over here. The code said that we should value MNGO at the current spot price, so that's what the code did, and poof went the entire network.

In the real world we have things like leverage ratios, anti-manipulation laws, circuit breakers, etc. Some of this is regulatory, and others are just things we figured out were good ideas many years ago.

I think there's a sense of hubris in the new code is law advocates. As a programmer, code is law scares me because I know code is nothing if not buggy, whereas law has real mechanisms where the case is presented in front of humans that generally speaking have reasonable thoughts. Yes law is flawed, judges can be biased, lawyers are expensive, but throwing all of that away in favour of code on the internet seems much worse.

Judges can issue injunctions that say "freeze everything until we sort it out in court", whereas code just runs whether you want it to or not. Courts can say "reverse all the transactions related to x", and blockchain is, by design, immutable.

Re: Hackers drain $100M off Solana-based DeFi platform Mango Markets

#40

Post by quickthrower2 »

mewse wrote: post #14

NB: This article is about the $115 million Mango Markets hack of a few days ago, not about the $127 million exploit of Binance's blockchain from last week or the $160 million Wintermute hack from last month or the $1.2 billion-with-a-'b' Acala hack from the month before, or...

Crypto being public might mean more hacks get reported whereas a 100 private businesses getting phished out of a million wont register even if the information is available to a reporter.
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