Well, Litecoin, one of the OG cryptos out there, took a serious hit on Saturday (25). It was a massive attack, and people are already saying it's the first time someone has heavily targeted the privacy layer of the network.

In a post over on X, the folks responsible for the blockchain mentioned that this was a 'zero-day' attack, which means the security flaw wasn't even known before it hit. This turned into a full-on denial-of-service attack, the kind that messes everything up, causing several major Litecoin mining pools to go offline.

They explained that some mining nodes that weren’t updated let an invalid transaction slip into the MimbleWimble Extension Block, which is the privacy layer of the network. Because of that, some people managed to pull coins from there and send them to decentralized exchanges outside.

To sort out the mess, the team had to reorganize the network, rolling back 13 blocks just to undo those erroneous transactions and ensure they didn’t count on the main chain.

So, this attack opened the door for something called double spending, you know — that thing about using the same coins more than once.

Alex Shevchenko, the head honcho at Aurora Labs, said on X that this was all a 'coordinated attack', really well orchestrated. According to him, the network was scrambled for about three hours, and during that time, the attackers took advantage to perform those double spends on protocols connecting different chains (cross-chain). Those systems ended up accepting some MWEB transactions that were later wiped from the history.

He also mentioned that the NEAR Intents project might have lost about $600,000 in this mess. But he said users can chill, because no one is going to take a hit, as any losses will be covered.

The folks at Litecoin confirmed that all the legit transactions made correctly during this period weren't affected. They said the error has been fixed and the network is back to functioning normally, no stress.

In the end, the price didn’t feel that much of a hit. This Sunday (26), LTC dropped just around 1%, trading at about $5.98. Still, year-to-date, the coin is down about 25%.