At the end of March 2022 there was a major hacking incident that caused the loss of crypto assets that were then worth USD 615 million, Axie Infinity was the victim.
For information, the value of the stolen crypto assets is now "only" USD 225 million due to the recent decline in the exchange rate of crypto assets.
It was Ronin, the blockchain that oversees Axie Infinity, which was hacked by North Korean hackers. It was later discovered that the incident was initiated through a fake job vacancy on LinkedIn.
Reported by The Block, the hackers - who according to the US government are Lazarus from North Korea - are targeting employees of the developer of Axie Infinity, namely Sky Mavis. The trick is to contact the employees through fake accounts on LinkedIn, and offer job vacancies.
When an employee is provoked, the perpetrators continue the recruitment process like a real company. Including a number of job interviews, and offers of salaries and various benefits are very large.
Then the climax was when a senior Sky Mavis engineer clicked on a PDF document that was thought to contain a job offer. It was from that PDF that the hacker was able to infiltrate the victim's computer, and then break into Sky Mavis' Ronin blockchain network and trick four of the nine nodes to validate transactions on Ronin.
Previously reported, the hacker attack focused on the bridge to the Ronin blockchain, which mediates between Axie Infinity and various other cryptocurrency blockchains such as Ethereum. Users can save Ethereum or USDC to Ronin, which can then be used to buy NFT items or in-game currency, and vice versa.
According to Sky Mavis, hackers used stolen private security keys to infiltrate network nodes and validate transactions to and from the Ronin blockchain. That way the hacker can secretly withdraw large amounts of Ethereum and USDC.
Axie Infinity is one of the success stories of 'play to earn' blockchain games, with a number of gamers who can make ends meet from the income in the game. However, the value of the token also dropped due to the decline in the exchange rate of cryptocurrencies.
His fate was made worse by the hacking incident which had a large loss. Even Sky Mavis has spent the last few months seeking funding -- the latest of which has reached USD 150 million -- to compensate its players.