OKX’s decentralized exchange (Dex) A recent exploit resulted in significant losses of over $430,000. The incident came to light when the X Wallet for OKX Web3 confirmed the compromise of a deprecated smart contract on the OKX DEX.
Although an official post-mortem is pending, experts at SlowMist highlighted in the X post that the breach was likely caused by a leak of the private keys of the OKX DEX proxy manager owner. These security failures allowed unauthorized access, allowing hackers to manipulate protocols and modify their operations.
🚨SlowMist Security Alert: Suspected private key leak of OKX DEX proxy manager owner🚨
According to information from SlowMist Zone, there appears to be an issue with the OKX DEX contract. SlowMist’s analysis shows that users approve when they exchange…
— SlowMist (@SlowMist_Team) December 13, 2023
Once the exploit was launched, the attackers altered the functionality of the DEX proxy contract to begin stealing tokens from users who had previously granted the protocol permission to interact with their wallets.
Preliminary assessments show that users lost a total of over $430,000 in cryptocurrency. Etherscan data showed that the attacker’s address contained a stash containing $70,000 worth of USDC and $70,000 worth of ELON, along with significant amounts of USDT, BTT, and other altcoins.
In response to this breach, the OKX Web3 team quickly revoked the contract permit and is actively cooperating with the relevant authorities to track and recover the stolen funds. It also promised to repay $370,000 to affected users.
OKX DEX, a collection of non-custodial cryptocurrency exchanges developed by OKX Cryptocurrency Exchange, operates without intermediaries and provides users with a platform to safely trade cryptocurrencies.
These attacks highlight the vulnerabilities that exist in decentralized exchanges and the need for strong security measures within the cryptocurrency space. As these incidents continue to raise concerns, the industry must strengthen protocols and strengthen security mechanisms to protect user assets.