Australian crypto casino hit with a $40 mln exploit

• Stake tried assuring its users that their funds remained safe but many crypto community members questioned the claim.
• The platform resumed its services a few hours after the attack but didn’t specify the reason behind the exploit.

A $40 million exploit hit the crypto betting platform Stake on 4 September, following a “private key leak.”

The incident was first reported by blockchain analyst Cyvers Alerts, mentioning an exploit of $16 million on Ethereum [ETH]. The stolen funds have been converted to Ethereum and transferred to several externally owned wallets.

Later, noted blockchain sleuth ZachXBT highlighted that a $15.7 million exploit took place on Ethereum and another $25.6 million exploit took place across Polygon [MATIC] and Binance [BNB] Smart Chain.

Another $25.6M was drained on BSC and Polygon

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) September 4, 2023

The hacker first moved approximately $3.9 million worth of Tether [USDT] and Ethereum worth $9.8 million. The next token movement included $1 million in USD Coin [USDC] and $900,000 worth of Dai [DAI].

Stake said that its Bitcoin [BTC], Litecoin [LTC], Ripple [XRP] wallets did not get affected. It also tried assuring its users that their funds remained safe.

https://twitter.com/Stake/status/1698746766076588057?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The Twitter community, however, questioned this claim.

Sorry did you just say “user funds are safe”? ?

— Chris Blec (@ChrisBlec) September 4, 2023

A few hours after the hack, the platform resumed all of its services.

However, Stake has not specified the reason behind the hack. CertiK, a blockchain security firm, speculated that a potential private key compromise could have led to the incident.

But there is still no clarity over the incident.

Stake is an Australian casino that allows users to deposit and play with crypto. Australian billionaire Ed Craven founded the company in 2017. Financial Times reported gross gaming revenues generated by Stake in 2022 to be $2.6 billion.

A number of celebrities, most notably Canadian rapper Drake, have endorsed the platform. The rapper signed a $100 million a year endorsement deal with Stake in 2022.

$997 million lost to exploits in 2023 so far

As per a CertiK report, crypto hacks cost the crypto industry around $997 million year-to-date (YTD) in 2023. It includes around $261 million lost to flash loan attacks, over $137 million lost to exit scams, and over $596 million lost to exploits.

#CertiKStatsAlert ?

Combining all the incidents in August we’ve confirmed ~$45.8M lost to exploits, hacks and scams.

Exit scams were ~$26M

Flash loans were ~$6.4M

Exploits were ~$13.5M

See more details below ? pic.twitter.com/L2gsJYBJ3b

— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) August 31, 2023