On Could 1, DeFi protocol Pike Finance corrected its description of a latest exploit and mentioned it was not attributable to a USDC vulnerability, as beforehand acknowledged.
In accordance with the corporate’s newest assertion:
“The time period ‘USDC vulnerability’ was inaccurate for summarizing final week’s exploit.”
As an alternative, weaknesses in Pike’s contract capabilities, notably points associated to the dealing with of transfers on Circle’s Cross-Chain Switch Protocol (CCTP), allowed the incident to happen.
It added that the foundation reason for the exploit was unrelated to the “performance and robustness” of Circle’s USDC enabled by CCTP or Gelato — a sensible contract automation protocol.
Pike Finance initially admitted full accountability in its rationalization of the primary April 26 assault, noting the exploit was a “consequence of the protocol [team’s] improper integration” of third-party applied sciences and that the obligations for sure checks lay “solely on Pike as an integrator.”
Nevertheless, when retrospectively referring to the primary assault following the April 30 incident, it misleadingly mentioned it could have been associated to a “USDC vulnerability.”
Every assault led to sizeable losses for Pike Finance.
The April 30 assault noticed the theft of 99,970.48 ARB, 64,126 OP, and 479.39 ETH. The incident resulted in a lack of $1.7 million, in accordance with Certik knowledge.
The sooner April 26 assault concerned the lack of 299,127 USDC on Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Optimism, in accordance with Pike Finance statements.
Trigger of every assault
The primary assault on April 26 resulted from capabilities associated to USDC transfers on CCTP as automated by Gelato. The vulnerability allowed attackers to vary the receiver’s handle and quantities, which Pike Finance processed as legitimate as a consequence of its improper integration of the options.
Pike Finance mentioned that its auditing associate, OtterSec, knowledgeable it of the difficulty. The protocol added that it was unable to handle the vulnerability earlier than the assault.
The second assault occurred after Pike Finance upgraded its spoke contracts to pause the community. The replace finally brought on the contract to behave as if it had been uninitialized, permitting attackers to improve the contract, bypass admin entry, and withdraw funds.
Pike Finance is one in all many DeFi tasks which have fallen sufferer to exploits. Nevertheless, April confirmed decreased losses from scams and exploits, in accordance with latest experiences.
