Venn Network researchers have stopped a security breach that could have stolen more than $10 million from decentralized finance (DeFi) projects.
The researchers identified a hidden weakness in thousands of smart contracts and secured the funds before the attacker could take advantage.
The problem was first spotted by @deeberiroz, a researcher with Venn Network. They found that many ERC-1967 proxy contracts were left uninitialized, which meant they had not yet been fully set up.
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In a July 10 post on X, @deeberiroz said:
Venn Network just discovered a critical backdoor on thousands of smart contracts leaving over $10,000,000 at risk for months.
This left them vulnerable to being hijacked by an attacker, who could insert hidden access and maintain control even after the contracts were later initialized.
Once the issue was discovered, @deeberiroz reached out to other security experts, including @pcaversaccio, @dedaub, and @seal_911. They spent about 36 hours securing funds and fixing the vulnerable contracts before the attacker could act.
Berachain, a DeFi protocol, responded by pausing its incentive contract and transferring its funds to a new contract.
The Berachain Foundation announced on X that no user funds were lost and that incentive claims would resume within a day after updates were finished.
Recently, GMX V1, the platform’s first-generation decentralized exchange (DEX), was forced to suspend trading. What happened? Read the full story.
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