Hackers steal $11mln from Yearn Finance

As per PeckShield Inc, the hack took place this morning on a previous version of Yearn Finance called iearn. Early reports indicated that Yearn and fellow DeFi protocol Aave were affected by the exploit

Decentralized finance (DeFI) protocol Yearn Finance fell victim to an exploit earlier today that saw the hacker make away with crypto assets worth millions of dollars. According to data from blockchain security companies, the attacker was able to drain stablecoins worth over $11 million from Yearn Finance.

As per PeckShield Inc, the hack took place this morning on a previous version of Yearn Finance called iearn. Early reports indicated that Yearn and fellow DeFi protocol Aave were affected by the exploit. Though, Aave took to Twitter following the hack to confirm that as opposite to what was being claimed, Aave V1 was not affected by the hack.

Blockchain security companies rushed to identify the main cause of the hack and eventually identified Yearn Finance’s misconfigured stablecoin yUSDT as the root vulnerability. Investigation by Peckshield disclosed that the hacker exploited this vulnerability to mint a considerable volume of yUSDT, 1,252,660,242,212,927.5 to be accurate, using just 10,000 USDT. The freshly minted yUSDT were cashed out via other dollar-pegged stablecoins.

According to on-chain analytics firm Lookonchain, the hacker’s heist included 3.03mln DAI, 2.5mln USD Coin, 1.7mln Binance USD, 1.5mln TUSD, and 1.1mln USD Tether. In a message to its Twitter community, Yearn Finance said that the effect of the hack was restricted to iearn, an out of date contract that was deprecated in 2020. Yearn V2 Vaults are supposedly unaffected.

The hack had a significant effect on the tokens linked to Yearn Finance and Aave. AAVE experienced a comparatively less decline of 2.15 per cent in its price, which eventually retrieved. Yearn Finance’s YFI token, on the other hand, dipped 4.6 per cent, hitting as low as $8,942, before recuperating to $9,175.