Terra hit by $6 million loss as attacker exploits vulnerability known since April

Cosmos-based Terra blockchain lost over $6 million after being hit with an exploit today, as reported by blockchain security firm Beosin. The exploiters took 60 million tokens ASTRO, $500,000 in Tether USD (USDT), $3,5 million in USD Coin (USDC), and 2,7 Bitcoins (BTC). As a result, the Terra blockchain was halted at block height 11430400 and was out for nearly 20 minutes.

According to Beosin, the attacker exploited a reentrancy vulnerability related to the interoperability function of the Cosmos ecosystem called Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC), which was disclosed in April this year.

As a response, Terra implemented an emergency upgrade and validators holding over 67% of the voting power on Terra’s ecosystem have upgraded their nodes, aiming at preventing the exploit from recurring.

The price of the token ASTRO, native to the decentralized exchange Astroport, slumped up to 71% following the exploit news. Meanwhile, the price of the token LUNA remained relatively steady, falling 3% in the past 24 hours. The total value locked at Terra also took a hit after the exploit, shrinking by 15%.