Nexus Mutual, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, confirmed today that its founder, Hugh Karp, was involved in a recent cyber attack. In the attack, the founder lost hundreds of NXM tokens (the DeFi protocol’s native token) worth about $8 million, from his personal wallet. Investigations on the matter are currently ongoing. The team also explains that the incident was only a targeted personal attack on the founder.
At 9:40am this morning @HughKarp's personal address was attacked and drained by a member of the mutual. Only Hugh’s address was affected in this targeted attack and there is no subsequent risk to Nexus Mutual or any members.https://t.co/72nrIDpKW6
— Nexus Mutual 🐢 (@NexusMutual) December 14, 2020
Hence, the platform and users’ funds weren’t affected in the latest breach.
US$8 Million in NXM Lost
Nexus Mutual poses itself as the decentralized alternative to insurance. While explaining the incident today, the team said the attack happened at 9:40 am, UTC. Somehow, the unknown attacker managed to gain remote access to Karp’s computer. With that access, the attacker modified the MetaMask extension. He/she tricked the founder into authorizing a transaction that moved about 370,000 NXM from his hardware wallet to the attacker.
The stolen cryptocurrencies are worth about US$8.2 million during the time of the incident. So far, the unknown attacker was spotted exchanging some of the funds on 1incExchange, according to Nexus Mutual. The DeFi insurer also said they debuted an investigation to identify the hacker and how he/she was able to pull the target.
Nexus Mutual is Safe
As earlier mentioned, the protocol’s team said Nexus wasn’t involved in the incident and that there won’t be any subsequent risk to Nexus Mutual or any members. “The mutual is not impacted; the pool of funds and all systems are safe.” In a later tweet, the founder of Nexus Mutual comments:
To the attacker. Very nice trick, definitely next level stuff.
You'll have trouble cashing out that much NXM.
If you return the NXM in full, we will drop all investigations and I will grant you a $300k bounty.
— Hugh Karp 🐢 (@HughKarp) December 14, 2020
NXM Token Takes a Hit
There are only about 5.8 billion NXM tokens in circulation, according to the information on Coinmarketcap. The stolen cryptocurrency represents over six percent of the circulating supply. Thus, selling off the token can cause a drop in the cryptocurrency’s price. At the time of writing, the NXM token is down, trading at $18.13 on Coinmarketcap. On a 24-hour count, the token sees a price change of -18.70 percent.
A Swift Reminder to Avoid Getting Hacked
The development today reminds crypto users of the need to observe appropriate measures in securing their funds. Millions of dollars can be lost in cryptocurrency if not adequately secured. While most exchanges claim to have well-secured systems, it’s not quite recommended to leave coins on exchanges. Keeping cryptos in hardware wallets remains one of the best ways to avoid being hacked, provided the wallet infos are not exposed.
It’s also not advisable to enter wallet keyphrase on any website or platform except on the hardware device directly.
