Shibarium Cross-Chain Bridge Faces "Complex" Flash Loan Attack, Loses $2.4 Million

BlockBeats News, September 14th, The Shibarium-Ethereum cross-chain bridge, connecting the Layer 2 network Shibarium with Ethereum, was hit by a flash loan attack on Friday, resulting in the theft of approximately $2.4 million worth of ETH and SHIB. After the incident, Shiba Inu developers restricted some activities on the network.

The attacker borrowed 4.6 million BONE tokens (the governance token of Shibarium) via a flash loan and reportedly obtained 10 out of 12 validator signing keys, thus acquiring two-thirds of the majority control. Subsequently, leveraging this privilege, the attacker withdrew about 224.57 ETH and 926 billion SHIB from the Shibarium cross-chain bridge contract, transferring the funds to their personal address. The stolen funds amount to approximately $2.4 million based on current prices.

As a response measure, Shiba Inu developers paused the staking and unstaking functions on the network, effectively freezing the BONE borrowed by the attacker through the flash loan (these tokens themselves have an unstaking delay mechanism), thereby cutting off their majority control. The attacker also ended up holding a significant amount of KNINE tokens related to K9 Finance, valued at around $700,000. However, when the attacker attempted to sell KNINE, the K9 Finance DAO intervened by blacklisting their address, preventing the tokens from being sold.