Security firms linked the Fetch.ai exploit to an attack on NuNet on September 19. The two incidents involved about $2 million in assets. NuNet’s NTX token later fell more than 90%, while FET recorded a smaller decline in price.
About 8.7 million FET tokens left a Fetch.ai token converter, PeckShield reported. The firm valued the drained assets at roughly $1.53 million. That made FET the largest share of the reported losses.
NuNet’s deployer account also minted 408.5 million NTX tokens without authorization, according to the alerts. PeckShield valued that issuance at about $462,730.
What Links the Fetch.ai Exploit to NuNet’s Token Mint?
The Blockaid estimate differs somewhat from that provided by the other firm. Specifically, Blockaid estimated the value of FET coins at $1.56 million and NTX coins at $452,000. As per its September 20 report, the total sum of the activity came close to $2.01 million.
As per PeckShield, the proceeds were exchanged for 546.36 ETH tokens. The ETH tokens amounted to approximately $1.44 million at the time of reporting.
Blockaid established the link between the two exploits based on the same receiving wallet. In particular, the address used was 0x1572…c362, according to Blockaid’s report.
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The platform provided some information in terms of wallets and transactions associated with the Fetch.ai exploit. The details allowed the exchanges and other projects to track the funds’ movement.
The Fetch.ai project provides autonomous AI agent services and operates the Agentverse platform. NuNet creates an open platform for sharing GPU and CPU resources. Both projects involve the blockchain technology along with AI services.
Contract Weaknesses Behind the Fetch.ai Exploit
The TokenConversionManagerV3 contract on the Ethereum blockchain was a key factor in Blockaid’s description of the Fetch.ai exploit. The attacker invoked the conversionIn function of this contract with an authorization signature. This transaction allowed the release of the remaining FET tokens of the converter.
According to SlowMist, the inbound conversion function required a signature from one external account. The report also pointed out the lack of verification of the amount of tokens in this function. The outbound function included such protection.
It should be noted that the reports did not explain the way in which the attacker managed to get this valid signature. The question of how he accessed the NuNet’s deployer also remained unanswered.
The price of NTX fell by around 65% after the Fetch.ai attack and NuNet warning. Reports on September 20 had the 24-hour fall rate of NTX exceeding 90%. NTX hit an all-time low of $0.00005338.
The latter reading for FET’s decline was also amid a general market sell-off, as most cryptocurrencies were lower with total market capitalization falling by 4.1%.
Why Does the Incident Matter Beyond AI Tokens?
The Fetch.ai exploit is in addition to the numerous exploits that occurred in the month, which resulted in major security losses. DefiLlama listed 17 security losses on September 17 that occurred in the preceding days of the month. The losses noted in these entries amounted to roughly $331 million.
Losses of $320 million were listed in the Liquid Network’s entry in the DefiLlama database on September 6. This single security loss contributed roughly 97% of the total losses in the preceding month. It was categorized as a bridge attack due to the minting of an unbacked token.
Nostra Money Market lost about $3.5 million in losses on September 17. This loss was associated with manipulation of the oracle through spot prices. Nomic’s entry on September 9 showed $3.15 million in losses due to an unbacked cross-chain mint.
The Chainflip entry on September 12 revealed losses of about $736,442. DefiLlama classified this loss as a logic flaw within the bridge.
This results in roughly $333 million losses recorded in September. This amount includes the losses reported earlier in DefiLlama and the new estimates by the security firms.
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