Blockchain network Ronin fell victim to possibly the largest crypto heist ever last week. Hackers were reportedly able to get around 612 million dollars.
The hack came to light when a Ronin user failed to withdraw 5,000 units of the cryptocurrency Ethereum on Tuesday, Ronin announced. The company, a platform on which online gamers can trade NFTs or “non-fungible tokens” – where a token is linked to a unique digital item – conducted an investigation and found that on March 23, hackers as many as 173,000 Ethereum coins and 25.5 million USD Coins stolen. At that time, its total value was 540 million dollars.
This would make it the largest crypto heist ever. That ‘record’ so far dates back to August last year, when a hacker was able to steal 580 million dollars worth of crypto coins from company PolyNetwork. However, the hacker then claimed to simply want to demonstrate the flaws in the system and quickly refunded 95 percent of the stolen amount.
According to Ronin, the hackers were able to gain access to the systems thanks to stolen private keys (needed to authorize transactions). The overview of the transactions – which everyone can view shows that the hackers still have the entire loot in their digital wallet and have not yet transferred it. However, the perpetrators have not yet been identified.