Gala Games, a blockchain gaming company, has seen increased speculation about an alleged attack. As its native GALA token price fell 25.6%, fears of a potential billion-dollar exploit surfaced.
In a new update on the attack, the on-chain tracker Lookonchain took to Twitter to reveal how the attacker profited from the hack to the tune of $6.5 million.
According to the data on Binance Smart Chain, an attacker minted 55.6B $GALA ($2.17B), which he immediately dumped to PancakeSwap. After 20 minutes, the attacker began purchasing $GALA from the PancakeSwap pool. He paid only $120,380 for a total of 406.9M $GALA.
1/ A SmartMoney arbitrage of nearly $6.5M in the $GALA attacking event, even more than the attacker’s profit.
Just 20 minutes after the attacker dumped, he started buying $GALA from the #PancakeSwap pool.
He bought a total of 406.9M $GALA, the cost is only $120,380. pic.twitter.com/eW5IvOw2d8
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) November 4, 2022
Lookonchain further revealed that the attacker then transferred 21.1 million $GALA ($674,701) to Binance before the exchange closed deposits and withdrawals, selling at around $0.032. “And transferred 385.8M $GALA ($5.79M) to Huobi, selling at about $0.015. He made a total profit of $6.5M!”
Concerns arose after a single blockchain address appeared to generate more than $1 billion in GALA tokens out of thin air. When crypto watch dogs PeckShield raised the alarm, pNetwork, which provides routing infrastructure for decentralized finance (DeFi) and gaming tokens, including GALA, implied that it was behind the mint.
pNetwork confirmed that they carried out the attack. The team stated:
We noticed pGALA wasn’t to be considered safe anymore and coordinated the white hat attack to prevent pGALA from being maliciously exploited.
They claimed that the new tokens were printed to assist pNetwork in draining a faulty PancakeSwap pool.
The team went on to explain that pGALA had to be redeployed due to a misconfiguration on the p.Network bridge. The pGALA PancakeSwap pool was being drained in order to do the same, which caused the panic.
The pNetwork assured that all the tokens on the Ethereum blockchain are safe. However, those on Pancakeswap are immune to lose as their “newly bought pGALA are unredeemable (hence worthless) and the BNB they have spent may get hacked.” The tweet confirmed that they are working with other exchanges to balance and “restore the functionality of pGALA deposits and withdrawals.”
