GMX, a prominent decentralized perpetual exchange, has recently gone through a huge exploit. As per SlowMist, GMX has witnessed a staggering $42M loss in the latest exploit that has raised concerns among the community. The blockchain security platform instantly took to social media to share the news of the exploit following detecting malicious wallet activity.
Exploiter Effectively Drains $42 from GMX, Sending Shockwaves through DeFi Ecosystem
The on-chain data reveals that the exploiter has drained a notable $42M from GMX in the recent exploit. This event has rattled the broader DeFi world raising eyebrows concerning the protection of the user funds. Additionally, the statistics provided by PeckShield (another blockchain security company), the exploiter has already bridged up to $9.6M out of the exploited funds to Ethereum.
Apart from that, Lookonchain, an on-chain analytics provider, also disclosed the data concerning the exploit. As per it, after exploiting the funds, the attacker, who utilized the wallet address “0xdf3…a5221,” rapidly exchanged them into $ETH and $DAI. This denotes an effort to obfuscate the funds’ trail via stablecoin and liquidity swaps.
Simultaneously, MistEye (the threat intelligence mechanism of SlowMist) provided the data revealing the stolen funds’ origin. Specifically, on the 7th of July, 2 $ETH coins were initially extracted from the crypto mixing protocol, Tornado Cash. Following that, the exploiter bridged the funds to the Arbitrum ecosystem. For this purpose, the attacker utilized Mayan Finance, a popular cross-chain service.
Minimized $ETH Holdings Indicate Conversion or Transfer
At the moment, the exploiter wallet holds more than $32.5M on Arbitrum across ten tokens. In this respect, Frax ($FRAX), USD Coin ($USDC), Wrapped Ethereum ($WETH), and Wrapped Bitcoin ($WBTC) account for the majority of these holdings. Particularly, exploited $FRAX tokens equal $10.54M while $WBTC coins hold $9.63M.
Subsequently, stolen $WETH and $USDC account for $5.86M and $4.28M respectively. According to SlowMist, the GMX attacker’s wallet holds nearly 0.57 $ETH (almost $1,530). This suggests that most of the drained $ETH holdings have either been converted or moved by the exploiter.