The Solana network has suffered several hacks and exploits over the past few months. Yesterday there was a scam on the Phantom wallet. Just as the SOL community uncovered the Phantom wallet scam, Mango Markets, the DeFi platform on the network, had a $100 million hefty exploit.
Solana’s Mango Markets allows you to trade cryptocurrencies with spot margin and perpetual futures on the Solana blockchain. The Mango DAO regulates it.
Attackers have successfully withdrawn funds from DeFi platforms by manipulating prices.
OtterSec, a blockchain auditing website, found that hackers temporarily increased the value of the security. The hacker took out a massive loan from Mango Markets’ Treasury Department.
According to reports, the hackers funded Account A with 5mm of USDC collateral around 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Joshua Lim, Head of Derivatives at Genesis Global Trading, further explained that the attacker presented his 483 million unit MNGO duration contract in his Mango Markets order book.
The attackers then funded another account at 6:24 p.m.He used 5 million USDC as collateral to purchase his 483 million MNGO Perpetual Contracts at $0.03 each 24 hours ET.
The attacker started manipulating the mango spot market price at 6:00 p.m. At 26:00 ET, the price fell to $0.91, and his MNGO value of $483 million fell to $423 million. The attackers then took out a loan of $116 million, leaving him with $116.7 million in Mango’s finances and completely depleting Mango’s liquidity. The seized assets were USDC, MSOL, SOL, BTC, USDT, SRM, and MNGO.
How Mango Markets Has Been Dealing with a $100M Attack
Mango Markets is a Solana-based DeFi platform that trades digital assets against physical margins and perpetual futures. Mango’s Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) manages the overall governance of Mango’s marketplace.
According to the DeFi protocol:
“We are currently investigating an incident where a hacker was able to drain funds from Mango via an oracle price manipulation. We are taking steps to have third parties freeze funds in flight. As a precaution, we will be disabling deposits on the front end and will keep you updated as the situation evolves.”
As soon as the hack was noticed, the network alerted the community on Twitter. The platform says it is investigating the Attack. It is trying to freeze the funds on the spot. Mango Markets tweeted details of the next steps.
In another tweet, the platform encouraged hackers to “discuss bug bounties” while urging users not to deposit into Mango.
The price of MNGO, a native asset in the Mango Market, dropped significantly. At the time of writing, the asset is trading at $0.02454, down 38.64% daily. The asset’s price surged to a high of $0.08986 before falling to a low of $0.0174.
Several Hacks have marred The Solana Blockchain
In March, another Solana protocol, Cashio, suffered a security breach that destroyed its flagship stablecoin, CASH. Cashio is a Solana-based DeFi application that allows users to create their CASH stablecoin. Hackers could exploit a vulnerability to issue an infinite amount of cash without sufficient leverage.
According to Defi Llama data, hackers siphoned around $28 million worth of liquidity from the exchange. Saber has issued an update announcing that he has closed the CASH liquidity pool following the incident. CASH, whose value is said to be pegged to the US dollar, lost its value.
