'Critical' Polygon Bug Put $24 Billion in Tokens at Risk Until Recent Hard Fork

Ethereum scaling project Polygon was at risk of losing nearly all of its MATIC tokens until it upgraded its network earlier this month. From a report The problem was a "critical" vulnerability in Polygon's proof-of-stake genesis contract, which could have allowed attackers to steal over 9.2 billion MATIC tokens (currently worth over $24 billion). The total supply of MATIC tokens is 10 billion. The vulnerability was reported on the bug bounty platform Immunefi by a whitehat hacker known as Leon Spacewalker. According to details shared Wednesday, the bug essentially could have allowed attackers to arbitrarily mint all of Polygon's more than 9.2 billion MATIC tokens from its MRC20 contract. After Spacewalker found the bug, Immunefi informed the Polygon team the same day. The team then confirmed the vulnerability and moved to update the Polygon network, initially with an update for its Mumbai testnet. According to Polygon, the testnet update was completed on December 4, and the team was preparing for the mainnet upgrade. Yet before the mainnet upgrade was undertaken, a malicious actor exploited the bug and stole 801,601 MATIC tokens (currently worth over $2 million). Polygon has said it will bear the cost of the theft.

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