Zcash, Litecoin Among 280 Blockchains Affected by Major Vulnerabilities, $25 Billion at Risk: Halborn

Blockchain security Halborn firm discovered the flaws in the Dogecoin network in March last year.

Written by Radhika Parashar, Edited by David Delima | Updated: 14 March 2023 17:42 IST

Zcash, Litecoin Among 280 Blockchains Affected by Major Vulnerabilities, $25 Billion at Risk: Halborn

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Blockchain vulnerabilities could risk failures of related protocols

Highlights

The vulnerability affecting these blockchains is codenamed Rab13s
Halborn says it has a kit developed to resolve the issue
Developers have been asked to run tests for Rab13s on their networks

At least 280 blockchains currently contain security bugs that could be used to take advantage of multiple vulnerabilities on their networks, giving access points to nefarious hackers, according to a security firm. Litecoin and Zcash are among the affected blockchains that support various kinds of DeFi protocols and other types of Web3 platforms for the metaverse, gaming or asset trading. A total of $25 billion (roughly Rs. 2,06,300 crore) is at risk while these blockchains remain unpatched. The findings have been shared by Halborn, a blockchain security firm.

Halborn says it first discovered this security bug last year on the open-source codebase for Dogecoin's own dedicated blockchain. The security platform has dubbed the vulnerability ‘Rab13s'. “The most critical vulnerability discovered is related to the peer-to-peer (p2p) communications, attackers can craft consensus messages and send it to individual nodes and taking them offline. An attacker can crawl the network peers and attack the unpatched nodes,” Rob Behnke, the CEO of Halborn states in the post.

4/ Another zero-day identified by Halborn was uniquely related to #Dogecoin, including an RPC vulnerability impacting individual miners.

Subsequently, variants of these 0-days were also discovered in similar blockchain networks potentially leading to DoS or RCE attacks.
— Halborn (@HalbornSecurity) March 13, 2023

Detailing the technical red flags that can help developers identify if the Rab13s has impacted their blockchains, the security firm says it has found a way to neutralise the bug. “Halborn successfully developed an exploit kit for Rab13s. All the necessary technical information has been shared with the identified stakeholders to help them remediate the bugs, and to release the necessary patches for the community and miners,” Behnke added.

The security firm has warned that this glitch is ‘severe' and that could have catastrophic consequences if not tackled in a timely fashion.

[Sponsored] Samsung Galaxy S24: The Ultimate Camera Phone With Smarter On-Device AI

Each blockchain hosts a wide array and range of DeFi applications, that are used by thousands of people to invest, trade their assets, or run similar services. The Ethereum blockchain alone, supports nearly 3,000 decentralised apps making it the most commercialised blockchain.

Vulnerabilities in blockchain networks could risk functional failures of all protocols reliant on them, leaving billions of dollars at risk. “On vulnerable networks, a successful exploitation of the relevant bug could lead to denial of service or remote code execution,” Behnke notes.

Interestingly, Halborn's warning post for blockchains comes just a day after Euler Finance lost millions in an exploit. The DeFi lending protocol is estimated to have lost a large amount somewhere in between $177 million (roughly Rs. 1,455 crore)-$195 million (roughly Rs. 1,600 crore). Exact details of the exploit are yet be revealed remain by Euler.

Bharat Web3 Association Finalises its First Chairman: All Details Here

Hackers managed to steal as much as $3.8 billion (nearly Rs. 31,100 crore) from the crypto-dominated DeFi sector last year, according to a recent report by Chainalysis.

The Xiaomi 13 Pro has a hefty price tag compared to the company's 2022 flagship model. How does it fare against other high-end phones launched in 2023? We discuss this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.

Further reading: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Halborn, hack

Radhika Parashar

Email Radhika

Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More