Prices of HLG tokens drop by 80% in hours
Blockchain tokenization platform Holograph got hacked massively on June 14. In an incident that led to the loss of 14.4 million dollars.
Furthermore, the price of the native token of Holograph, that is HLG collapsed around 80 percent within hours of the exploit.
Details of the Exploit.
In the attack, a vulnerability was exploited in Holograph’s smart contract, with 1 billion of the HLG token sprawled across nine transactions.
Perpetrators minted 1 billion HLG tokens and absconded with tokens worth $14.4 million.
Minting in crypto is the process of generating new coins by authenticating data, creating new blocks, and recording the information onto the blockchain. This means that the perpetrators created new HGL tokens 1Bn to be exact.
The exploit was announced on the official page of Holograph on X
The Holograph Operator contract has been exploited by a malicious actor, enabling the hacker to mint 1 billion additional HLG
— Holograph (@holographxyz) June 13, 2024
The team has patched the initial exploit & is working with exchange partners to lock the malicious accounts
The team has launched an investigation & is…
According to Etherscan data, the hacker sent seven out of the nine transfers-in batches of 100 million HLG tokens.
Ten minutes later-after these transfers took place-HLG’s price quickly dropped, eventually bottoming out at $0.0029.
Immediate Aftermath
However the crash was more or less immediate and highly violent, within hours, the value of HLG plummeted almost by 80%.
At the time of this writing, HLG is at $ 0.00608, leaving its market capitalization at a little over $10.7 million. Since the attack, the hacker has moved into Tether after converting the stolen tokens into the stablecoin within hours, which ensured most of his gains were preserved.
Holograph’s Response;
The Holograph team acted fast to identify and patch the vulnerability and is now working with cryptocurrency exchanges to lock the accounts owned by the hacker.
“The team has patched the initial exploit and is working with exchange partners to lock the malicious accounts,”
the team said in a statement.
“Launching an investigation, the team is in the process of contacting law enforcement.”
What Is Holograph?
Holograph is a tokenization platform based on a blockchain, provides tools and technologies to create, conduct management and transfer already created real world asset tokens across several networks.
In addition the native token HLG fulfills the functions of paying commissions and for participation in the votes regarding the project’s development within the Holograph ecosystem.
Industry Impact
However the Incident serves as a very grim reminder of the weak links in blockchain platforms.
But it is not the lone instance. Recently, the decentralized protocol UwU Lend faced a double whammy as the platform was hacked twice in three days and the losses combined to the tune of 23.7 million dollars.
Future Measures
Indeed, Holograph, along with other blockchain platforms, needs to amp up security to ensure a recurrence of such does not happen in the future.
Frequently conducting audits, aggressive testing, and monitoring will help prevent or discover such exploits.
