K9 Finance Offers $23K Bounty To Hacker Behind $2.4M Hack

K9 Finance, a DeFi platform built on Shiba Inu’s Shibarium network, has offered a 5 Ether,  about $23,000, bounty to the hacker behind a $2.4 million exploit of the Shibarium bridge.

On Monday, the DeFi platform sent an on-chain message to the hacker. The team urged the attacker to return the stolen funds and said the bounty will stay open for 30 days, but its value will start decreasing after a week.

K9 Finance wrote that once they trigger recoverKnine(), the settlement is final. They added that if the attacker chooses to accept(), the agreement cannot be undone, emphasizing that “code is law.” They added that the bounty is active and urged the attacker to act quickly.

The exploit 

The exploit happened on Friday, when hackers gained access to validator signing keys, resulting in losses of about $2.4 million in Ethereum (ETH) and Shiba Inu (SHIB). They purchased 4.6 million Bone ShibaSwap (BONE) tokens using a flash loan, obtained majority validator control, and signed an evil transaction that siphoned off the funds.

As a response, Shibarium developers suspended staking and unstaking activities and transferred stake manager funds into a multisig-controlled hardware wallet to ensure security. The developers are collaborating with security companies such as Hexens, Seal 911, and PeckShield to probe the incident.

Shiba Inu developer Kaal Dhairya said the team has also contacted authorities but remains open to negotiating with the attacker. Their main focus is restoring security and protecting users’ assets.

The exploit triggered a price drop across Shiba Inu ecosystem tokens. Currently, SHIB is trading at $0.00001311, down 6.57% in the past day. K9 Finance (KNINE) is trading at $0.052556, down about 5%, while BONE is priced at $0.1928, with a 6% drop.

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