Crypto Start Up Suffered $8 Million Hack Attack

Berlin-based cryptocurrency trading aggregator LI.FI has been hacked for $8 million, according to blockchain security firm PeckShield.

In a post on social media platform X, the cryptocurrency startup warned users against interacting with any apps supported by LI.FI for now. The project's team is currently in the process of investigating a potential exploit.

“Only users who manually set infinite confirmations appear to be affected,” the Crypto Start Up project added.

DEX trading platform Oku Trade announced that it has temporarily disabled LI.FI from Oku Bridge. This isn't the first time LI.FI has experienced a security breach. In March 2022, approximately $600,000 worth of USDC, MATIC, AAVE and other tokens were stolen from 29 wallets.

In fact, according to PeckShield, the bug is “basically the same” this time, meaning the project hasn't learned from its previous mistakes. In 2022, the hacker managed to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars by exploiting the protocol's pre-bridge swap feature. The funds were stolen in a single transaction. “The attacker started by passing a small amount of legitimate exchange followed by multiple direct calls to various token contracts,” the project said.

The start-up claimed that the attack occurred because it failed to finish the audit earlier. He added that security measures needed to be improved "drastically". In July 2022, LI.FI raised $5.5 million in funding from the likes of Coinbase and Lattice Capital. In May 2023, it introduced a token bridge as well as a decentralized exchange aggregator.