Celer Network, a blockchain interoperability protocol established in 2018, has suffered from Domain Name System (DNS) poisoning attack.

According to the tweets shared by Celer, the company was attacked on August 17th, resulting in $240,000 stolen from user funds. 

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On the day of the exploit, Celer was the first to notify its users about a possible attack. Celer quickly disabled its cBridge’s front line to avoid any further exploits and ensure user protection. Moreover, the company advises customers to revoke any transaction approvals on smart contracts, including Polygon, BNB Smart Chain, Astar, Ethereum, Avalanche, and others.

On August 18th, Celer Network confirmed that the work of cBridge’s frontend has been restored and protected with additional monitoring. 

After an internal investigation, Celer claims that its protocols and smart contracts were not exploited. On the other hand, using the cBridges frontend, the hacker managed to claim $240,000 from a small portion of user funds. It appears that the attacker has used sanctioned Tornado Cash to launder stolen funds. Celer has promised that all affected users will receive their compensation fully.

Finishing its tweet thread, Celer advised users to turn on the Secure DNS option in their browser’s settings to prevent risks of future attacks. 

It is not the first time DNS attacks have been performed against DeFi protocols. On August 9th, Curve Finance, an automated market maker protocol, faced a nameserver attack. The hacker changed the DNS protocol entry to a cloned version and managed to steal $573,000. 

What is interesting is that the sequence of events was rather similar. Curve Finance also informed its customers using Twitter and ordered them to immediately revoke any contracts signed at the time of the exploit. However, Binance managed to retrieve $450,000 out of all stolen funds. 

by Aaron S. – Expert Reviewer, BitDegree