There has been another cyberattack in the DeFi space, following the recent $600 million Poly Network hack. Neko Network is the latest victim – it has lost assets worth over $2 million. The blockchain security company, SlowMist, reported that Neko Network has suffered a loss of $2 million worth of stablecoins. As stated in the report, the hacker’s address collected 390,000 BUSD, 2 million USDT and 1 BTCB.

DeFi attacks have become a significant problem

Neko Network‘s lending protocol was the next to be struck. This onslaught is the most recent in what appears to be efforts intended to damage the security of vulnerable Defi tokens. These recollective incidents seem to be ramping up, with the PancakeBunny flash loan attack in May still lingering.

Neko Network is an exploratory network of Maze Protocol, to try out SHR’s abilities and risks in an actual economic situation. The Neko attack was carried out by tapping into a loophole that permitted the hacker to utilize the system’s lending feature to escape with embezzled funds. The hacker abused the lending system by borrowing a massive amount of BNB, which made the price of the Bunny token crash, when the hacker unloaded it on the market. This caused a dip of around 95%, leaving the hacker with a potential profit of $3 million.

The attackers traded the embezzled stablecoin with BNB, using PancakeSwap on the Binance Smart Chain. 2,871 out of the total 6,390 BNBs were sent back to the network. The attackers continued to transfer 100 BNB at a time, to Tornado Cash, an Ethereum-based tech solution that helps protect anonymity on the crypto network. The hacker’s address had a total of 2,020 BNB remaining as of Friday.

In Conclusion

Most of the DeFi protocols are permissionless, which means they don’t need to adhere to an regulatory measures, and therefore anybody on the internet can openly obtain their codes. This easy access makes DeFi applications susceptible to cyber exploitation.

The DeFi network has been under fire month after month, for the most part due to internal defects. Attacks like these, that affect millions of dollars of investments, might drive the financial regulatory bodies to initiate appropriate protection measures. Nevertheless, the string of attacks raises investor concerns over the security hazard of the DeFi market, despite its flourishing growth.