According to a report by “The Block,” developers of the decentralized artificial intelligence project Bittensor temporarily halted operations of its blockchain network upon discovering suspicions of a security vulnerability attack on user wallets. As per blockchain detective ZachXBT, this attack may be related to a leaked private key.
On Wednesday, administrators of Bittensor’s community Discord, const [т,T], announced that the team is investigating attacks on some Bittensor wallets in the past 3 hours. As a precautionary measure, all transactions on the chain have been completely ceased until more information about the nature of the attack is obtained. The latest block on the Bittensor blockchain was confirmed approximately 4 hours ago.
Source:
Bittensor Discord
In an update on his Telegram channel, blockchain detective ZachXBT explained that Bittensor ceased operations earlier today due to another theft incident possibly caused by a leaked private key. According to ZachXBT, around 32,000 Bittensor native tokens, TAO, were stolen today, amounting to $8 million, which likely prompted the Bittensor Foundation to suspend network operations to prevent further incidents from occurring.
Earlier in June, ZachXBT mentioned that a TAO holder had 28,200 TAO stolen, with the attacker transferring the stolen funds to Ethereum, exchanging some TAO for Ether (ETH) and US Dollar Coin (USDC), and then moving them to several exchanges.
As the investigation unfolds, the TAO Foundation has not released a detailed statement regarding this attack event. Possibly influenced by this news, the price of TAO tokens dropped nearly 13% within the past 8 hours, with the trading price of TAO at $230 USD at the time of writing.