Base project RocketSwap shares emergency plan following $865K exploit

Base project RocketSwap Labs has outlined its emergency program to bounce back from a brute force hack that swiped $865,000 or 471 Ether (ETH) from the protocol on Aug. 14.

The team explained on Aug. 15 that they plan on redeploying a new farm contract and open-source it on-chain, relinquish minting rights — presumably of RCKT — and will soon call on the hackers to return the assets, among other things:

The emergency programme agreed upon by the team is as follows.

1. We plan to redeploy a new farm contract by dropping the proxy contract and open sourcing it on-chain.

2. The new farm will advance the production reduction plan by 0.075 per block.

3. The team relinquishes…

— RocketSwap (@RocketSwap_Labs) August 15, 2023

On Aug. 14, a hacker stole approximately 471 ETH and bridged it from Base to Ethereum, according to blockchain security firm PeckShield.

The exploiter then created the 90 trillion “LoveRCKT” tokens and transferred them over to Uniswap along with 400 ETH, it explained.

#PeckShieldAlert The @RocketSwap_Labs exploiter has grabbed ~471 $ETH and bridged them from #Base to #Ethereum, and then created the token $LoveRCKT, the exploiter already supplied 90T $LoveRCKT and 400 $ETH to #Uniswap https://t.co/z12YlLjbsn pic.twitter.com/Wxaph6lcuD

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) August 15, 2023

The news was confirmed by RocketSwap Labs on Aug. 14 at 11:06 UTC, with PeckShield and fellow blockchain security firm CertiK providing additional details about the exploit a few hours later.

Related: Zunami Protocol confirms stablecoin pools attacked, $2.1M loss estimated

RocketSwap Labs said attributed the exploit to a brute force attack on the protocol’s server:

“A brute force hack of the server was detected, and due to the proxy contract used for the farm contract, there were multiple high-risk permissions that led to the transfer of the farm’s assets. We shut down the farm to prevent further damage.”

RocketSwap is a decentralized exchange on Base, with plans to gradually become community-owned through a decentralized autonomous organization.

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