$8.4m Exploit Breached from DeFi Lending Protocol Moola Markets

Another exploit hits the crypto industry with roughly $8.4 million stolen from Moola Markets, a non-custodial liquidity and lending protocol built on the mobile-first Celo blockchain.

According to Research director Igor Igamberdiev, the attacker exploited the protocol by using 243,000 CELO tokens deposited from Binance and, in turn, loaned 60,000 CELO to Moola protocol to borrow 1.8 million MOO for use as collateral. 

With the remaining CELO, the exploiter increased the MOO token price and used the borrowed MOO token as collateral to borrow more tokens across a series of other DeFi lending protocols.

Using all of these strategies, the exploiter made away with 8.8 million CELO ($6.5 million), 765,000 cEUR ($700,000), 1.8 million MOO ($600,000), and 644,000 cUSD ($600,000).

Currently, Moola Markets has paused all operations on its platform due to the latest exploit. And according to an update on its Twitter page, the platform advises users not to trade mTokens as the team is actively investigating the exploit.

“We are actively investigating an incident on @Moola_Market. All activity on Moola has been paused. Please do not trade mTokens,” said Moola Markets in its Twitter update.

The team added that they have contacted law enforcement and taken steps to make it difficult for the exploiter to liquidate the funds. And in addition, they are ready to negotiate a bounty payment in exchange for the attacker returning the funds within the next 24 hours.

This month has been a month of exploitation like never seen in the industry. According to new data from Chainanalysis, 2022 is most likely to surpass 2021 in terms of the biggest year for hacking on record.

Last week, trading and lending platform Mango Markets got hit by a $100 million exploit. As reported by Blockchain.News, the attacker, manipulated the price of Mango Market's native MANGO token via an oracle.