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Adam Back, a cypherpunk and the Blockstream CEO, has taken to his account on the X social media network to comment on the recent Bybit hack, when the exchange lost a mind-blowing $1.4 billion worth of Ethereum.
The prominent figure in the crypto space and one of the leading Satoshi candidates stated that the thing that allowed the hackers to succeed was the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) itself.
Back slams EVM as key reason for hack
According to the tweet, Adam Back seems to believe that the complexity of the EVM and Ethereum transactions was the main reason the hackers managed to drain the contents of Bybit's entire Ethereum cold wallet.
Hardware wallets, he stated, particularly mentioning Ledger HWW (hardware wallets) struggle with performing transactions on this blockchain because of its complexity: “HWW are far too low power to interpret and contain the information to verify EVM over-complex scripts and state.”
He explained that, in this particular case of Bybit, the exchange was trying to send $100 million worth of Ethereum from a cold wallet to a hot one. However, since a blind signing mechanism was involved, the hackers managed to manipulate the ETH smart contract and drain the whole $1.4 billion in ETH.
On Saturday, Back shared his take on the Bybit hack, saying that “Bitcoin’s dominance ratches higher” and bashing Ethereum and EVM as “complex, fragile, blind-signed, un-securable.”
Alex DovbnyaBybit closes gap in lost ETH
The Bybit exploit took place on Friday and is believed to have been orchestrated by the infamous North Korean hacking group Lazarus, supported by the local government. As reported by U.Today earlier, several Bitcoin maximalists, including JAN3 CEO Samson Mow, ironically urged Vitalik Buterin to execute a rollback on the Ethereum chain to recover the lost funds – a similar case already took place in 2016 after the DAO hack, when $60 million in ETH were stolen by hackers. That hardfork resulted in the emergence of the Ethereum Classic (ETC) coin.
However, the Ethereum team said that from the point of view of the Ethereum protocol, the transaction that drained the wallet was as legit as any other transaction on ETH.
By now, according to the Bybit CEO, the exchange has fully closed the gap in ETH liquidity.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov