The information was shared by @samczsun of research-driven technology investment firm Paradigm, who revealed that, when sharing the malicious proposal, the attacker claimed that it used a logic similar to a proposal that had previously passed by the community. However, this time, the proposal had an additional function.
As explained by @samczsun:
The total control over Tornado Cash governance allows the attacker to withdraw all of the locked votes, drain all of the tokens in the governance contract and brick the router. At the time of writing, the attacker “simply withdrew 10,000 votes as TORN and sold it all,” said @samczsun.
The attack comes as a reminder to crypto investors to vet proposal descriptions and logic. An active community of Tornado Cash, who goes by the name Tornadosaurus-Hex or Mr. Tornadosaurus Hex, confirmed that all funds in Governance are potentially compromised and requested all members to withdraw all funds locked in governance.
As shown above, they also attempted deploying a contract that could potentially revert the changes while still suggesting the community to withdraw their funds. Cointelegraph also came across a distress call from one of Tornado Cash’s community developer who confirmed the above developments, stating:
The team is currently in search of Solidity developers that can help save the protocol from extinction. They additionally stated that “we need contact with Binance - this exchange has more tokens than the attacker.”
The developer hopes the solution will empower “the community to defend against hackers abusing the anonymity sets of honest users without requiring blanket regulation or sacrificing on crypto ideals.”
Magazine: ‘Moral responsibility’: Can blockchain really improve trust in AI?
Magazine: ‘Moral responsibility’: Can blockchain really improve trust in AI?