A 22-year-old Canadian hacker, Andean Medjedovic, is currently on the run after allegedly exploiting a flaw in KyberSwap, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, to steal $48.8 million in cryptocurrency, according to a recent indictment.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York claims that Medjedovic took advantage of weaknesses in KyberSwap’s code back in 2023.
Medjedovic is said to have manipulated the protocol’s liquidity pools (LPs) by borrowing vast sums of cryptocurrency, inflating prices artificially.
This led to a “glitch” in KyberSwap’s automated market maker (AMM), which allowed him to drain $48.8 million from 77 LPs spread across six public blockchains.
The hacker then allegedly attempted to blackmail KyberSwap’s developers, demanding control over the protocol and its decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) in exchange for half of the stolen assets. Medjedovic is also accused of laundering the stolen funds through various methods, including digital asset mixers and bridge protocols.
The indictment also references a previous hack in 2021, in which Medjedovic allegedly exploited Indexed Finance, siphoning off $16.5 million. He faces charges of wire fraud, computer hacking, and attempted extortion, as revealed in a Brooklyn federal court filing.
An international arrest warrant has been requested for Hayden Davis, co-creator of the LIBRA token, which became the center of a major political scandal in Argentina.
Chris Larsen, the co-founder of Ripple, suffered a significant financial blow in 2024 when he lost over $661 million worth of XRP due to a security breach in the password management system LastPass.
Venture capitalist and Mission Gate founder George Bachiashvili is now facing imprisonment in Georgia after a court revoked his bail.
Hackers have exploited a vulnerability in DeFi aggregator 1inch’s resolver smart contract, leading to losses of over $5 million, according to blockchain security firm SlowMist.