Cydia Dev Discloses Ethereum L2 Bug — Optimism Attacker Could Have ‘Printed an Arbitrary Quantity of Tokens’ – Bitcoin News
Feb 13, 2022
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On February 10, the well-known developer of Cydia and iOS Jailbreak, Jay Freeman, in any other case often known as Saurik, revealed a Twitter thread a couple of bug he discovered within the Layer-2 (L2) scaling protocol often known as Optimism. In line with Freeman, the vulnerability, which has been patched, might have allowed an attacker to create an infinite quantity of tokens.
Jay Freeman is a outstanding software program developer who’s well-known for his iOS Jailbreak and Cydia instruments. Freeman’s Cydia graphical consumer interface (GUI) was launched in February 2008, and it provides customers with jailbroken iPhones the power to obtain unauthorized software program for the Apple smartphone working system iOS. Freeman lately revealed a weblog publish referred to as “Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism,” which explains how he reported a crucial safety concern to the builders of the L2 scaling answer Optimism.
Optimism’s L2 answer permits customers to maneuver ethereum for a fraction of the associated fee. At present, transferring ether utilizing Optimism can value $0.56 per switch versus the L1 fuel charges right now that are $3.29 per transaction. To swap cash onchain utilizing L1 it’s going to value a consumer $16.47 in ether however utilizing Optimism to swap cash will value $0.83. Freeman reported the Optimism vulnerability on February 2, 2022 and the bug has since been patched.
The assault would have allowed “an attacker to duplicate cash on any chain utilizing their “OVM 2.0” fork of go-ethereum (which they name l2geth),” Freeman stated. The developer additional defined that he plans to speak concerning the Optimism vulnerability on February 18th at Ethdenver 2022. Freeman was additionally awarded a $2,000,042 bounty for locating the bug and disclosing it to the staff. The software program engineer’s weblog publish describes how the attacker might mint an arbitrary amount of tokens earlier than the bug was patched.
“The bug introduced right here — which I dub ‘Unbridled Optimism’ — can possibly be (crudely) modelled as a bug on the far facet of a ‘bridge,’” Freeman wrote. “However is definitely a bug within the digital machine that executes sensible contracts on Optimism. Exploiting this permits the attacker to have entry to an successfully unbounded variety of tokens (aka, the IOUs) on the far facet of the bridge. It’s my rivalry that that is extra harmful than merely tricking the reserves into permitting a withdrawal.” The developer continued:
Additional, together with your unbounded provide of IOUs, you would go to each decentralized trade working on the L2 and mess with their economies, shopping for up huge portions of different tokens whereas devaluing the chain’s personal foreign money. Utilizing your entry to infinite capital, you would additional manipulate onchain pricing oracles to leverage for different assaults; and, till somebody lastly realizes your cash is counterfeit, arbitragers will flock to the community to promote you their property.
The Pessimism Surrounding Cross-Chain Purposes
Along with the vulnerability present in Optimism, Freeman mentioned cross-chain bridge know-how in nice element. The developer talked about that the identical day he disclosed the bug to Optimism, the Wormhole bridge was attacked. Freeman additionally touched upon the Poly Community hack in his publish. “Even when hackers do steal cash from a bridge, the ramifications are restricted,” Freeman’s weblog publish explains.
Freeman discovering the Optimism bug follows the slew of hacks towards cross-chain bridges and the group’s newfound concern over the safety of this up-and-coming know-how. The Cydia developer’s weblog publish mentions ideas like “’insurance coverage insurance policies’ towards crypto hacks.” Furthermore, Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin lately mentioned considerations tied to the safety of cross-chain bridge platforms. “I’m pessimistic about cross-chain functions,” a current Reddit publish by Buterin declares.
What do you concentrate on Jay Freeman’s Optimism bug discovery? Tell us what you concentrate on this topic within the feedback part under.
Jamie Redman
Jamie Redman is the Information Lead at Bitcoin.com Information and a monetary tech journalist dwelling in Florida. Redman has been an lively member of the cryptocurrency group since 2011. He has a ardour for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized functions. Since September 2015, Redman has written greater than 5,000 articles for Bitcoin.com Information concerning the disruptive protocols rising right now.
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