A member of the Munchables development team, purportedly associated with North Korea, orchestrated a theft exceeding $60 million in cryptocurrency from the project. However, following public exposure, the perpetrator returned the stolen funds. On March 27, the gaming protocol Munchables, based on the Blast network, encountered a significant security breach resulting in the loss of over $62.5 million worth of Ethereum (ETH).
Acknowledging the potential complicity of one of their team members, Munchables issued a statement via an online post. A now-deleted Telegram post by blockchain investigator ZachXBT linked the hacker to an address, identifying them as a “DPRK IT Worker.” Subsequently, Pixelcraft Studios’ developer Dan disclosed past interactions with the hacker for game development purposes in 2022, expressing concerns about possible connections to North Korean hacker groups.
After the hacker’s identity was unveiled, blockchain analysis uncovered several addresses associated with the culprit, some of which displayed interactions with major cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, MEXC, and ChangeNOW.
Following intense scrutiny and investigations, the attacker opted to return all pilfered funds. Munchables confirmed the agreement, emphasizing that the individual voluntarily returned the assets without any conditions and provided necessary private keys to facilitate the recovery process.
Munchables stands as a burgeoning decentralized finance (DeFi) platform focused on gaming, operating on the Ethereum layer-2 network, Blast. The platform enables users to access in-game assets in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) through cryptocurrency staking mechanisms.