Radiant Capital Halts Lending Markets After $50 Million Cybersecurity Breach

According to Cointelegraph, Radiant Capital has suspended its lending markets following a significant cybersecurity breach that resulted in losses exceeding $50 million on the BNB Chain and Arbitrum. The breach was confirmed by Radiant and two cybersecurity firms, De.Fi Antivirus and Ancilia Inc. De.Fi Antivirus reported that the exploit targeted Radiant Capital contracts on the BSC and ARB chains using the 'transferFrom' function, which allowed the attacker to drain users' funds, including USDC, WBNB, and ETH. The firm estimated the losses at approximately $58 million, while Ancilia Inc. provided a similar estimate of around $50 million. Radiant acknowledged the issue in a post on the X platform, stating that they are collaborating with SEAL911, Hypernative, ZeroShadow, and Chainalysis to address the situation. The lending markets on Base and Mainnet have been paused until further notice. The breach involved the compromise of a multisignature wallet, or 'multisig,' which is used to control Radiant. The attacker reportedly gained control of several signers' private keys, allowing them to seize control of multiple smart contracts. Pop Punk, the pseudonymous co-founder of token launch platform g8keep, described the incident as akin to a school bully stealing lunch money, emphasizing the severity of the breach and advising users to revoke all approvals. Cybersecurity company Hacken reported that access control mechanism exploits accounted for $316 million, or nearly 70% of the total funds stolen in crypto hacks during the third quarter of 2024. Multisigs, while a dominant means of securing Web3 protocols, can create centralized fail-points that are vulnerable to attackers. Sreeram Kannan, founder of restaking protocol EigenLayer, highlighted the limitations of multisigs in an interview with Cointelegraph, stating that many contracts rely on multisigs, which are far from decentralized. He emphasized the need for more robust security measures to provide the trust that blockchain technology is supposed to offer.