Last week some new information came to light about how the North Korean-linked Lazarus Group was able to hack Axie Infinity's Ronin Blockchain. This new information is another critical step in helping individuals understand what happened and why. After the hack occurred people from developers to the average layperson were taken back and confused about how such a hack could occur and this revelation helps explain that.
How Did it Happen?
Due to the game's huge popularity when the hack occurred people I knew figured something had gone wrong with the way the smart contracts were implemented or there had been a back door that no one had discovered. Looking at previous hacks this made the most sense as well as huge hacks like this tended to have a certain set of things that would lead them to occur. This was not one of those times though and the hack is even more embarrassing because of how it occurred.
The Lazarus Group set up an elaborate fake job scheme posing as recruiters on LinkedIn and tricked a senior engineer at Sky Mavis. This engineer went through several rounds of "interviews" for a position that did not exist before receiving an offer letter. This letter was laced with spyware and once it was downloaded the hackers gained access to Axie's blockchain Ronin.
Fallout
As one would expect this was an awful look for Axie Infinity and the game has since struggled. Currently, the amount of daily active users is somewhere around 370,000 which is a huge fall from the 2.7 million before the hack. Looking back if people knew how the hack had occurred at the time that it did I am not sure if Axie Infinity would still be around at all. Having someone in a senior position like they did who fell for this basic type of hack is not only embarrassing but exposes how poor their cybersecurity was at the time. This combination of human error and lack of cybersecurity is shocking for a game/company that was in control of as much money as Axie Infinity was.
While I am sure they have addressed these issues now it is extremely disappointing to see that this was the reason why the hack occurred. When you are someone high ranking on the game that is setting the example of what Web3 and Play2Earn games can be having this occur is unacceptable. With this information coming out now though they can dodge the immense scrutiny that this revelation reveals. Enough time has passed now that people would be hard-pressed to try and bring it up again. However, if anything like this occurs again then this issue will be sure to explode onto the scene again because of how bad this issue is.
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