The cryptocurrency market has been rocked by one of the most significant security breaches in recent years. During an attack on Binance, assailants targeted assets within the Ripple ecosystem, withdrawing 233.46 million XRP from the exchange’s hot wallets. The estimated value of these stolen assets is approximately $296 million.
Ripple’s Schwartz Mocks Amidst Stellar Rivalry
In the aftermath of the incident, David Schwartz, Ripple’s former Chief Technology Officer and one of the developers of the XRP Ledger, responded with a provocative comment. Following remarks from Dom Kwok, co-founder of EasyA, about how only his Litecoin holdings remained after the breach wiped out his balances, Schwartz sarcastically noted that his Binance account had been credited with an extra 517 XLM. The comment underscored the long-standing tension between Ripple and Stellar, the latter founded by former Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb. The notion that the attackers left a rival token in users’ accounts rapidly circulated on social media, adding further fuel to the competitive fire between the two blockchain networks.
David Schwartz, Binance hesabına fazladan 517 XLM yatırıldığını söyleyerek saldırganlara yönelik sert bir ironi kullandı.
Beyond the jest, the attack had a direct impact on the Ripple ecosystem. Due to the structure of the XRP Ledger, XRP, as the native token, cannot be forcibly frozen or reclaimed at the protocol level, leaving no technical means to block the stolen assets.
Blocking Moves on RLUSD; XRP Remains Vulnerable
Ripple’s response was more proactive concerning its other asset, RLUSD. According to Jack McDonald, Senior Vice President at Ripple, the company identified the movements of the stolen Ripple USD and swiftly blocked addresses linked to the attackers.
Glossary: RLUSD, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, is issued by Ripple and is a digital asset often subject to freeze operations by the issuing entity’s control mechanisms.
Jack McDonald, çalınan RLUSD’nin hareketinin izlendiğini ve ilgili adreslerin hızla bloke edildiğini açıkladı.
Binance Co-Founder Yi He publicly thanked the Ripple team for their prompt intervention, announcing that around $200 million in RLUSD funds had been frozen, ensuring the safeguarding of users’ assets. This clearly highlighted the difference between the completely decentralized nature of XRP and the controlled issuance model of RLUSD.
The attack, forming part of a broader Binance incident affecting 10 different blockchain networks and estimated between $6.3 billion and $6.36 billion in scope, revealed the scale of vulnerability in the crypto world. So far, Binance and its partners have managed to freeze around $3 billion in assets across various ecosystems.
Blockchain researchers suspect that the North Korean-linked group known as TraderTraitor, or Lazarus, could be behind the attack. The group has been notorious in recent years for launching large-scale cyber attacks on cryptocurrency platforms.
