#Litecoin
🛡️ Litecoin Reveals Details of Zero-Day Attack: 85,000 $LTC Airdropped and Secret Deal
Litecoin has released its final report on critical incidents in the MWEB privacy protocol. What started as a hidden bug almost led to massive network inflation.
🧵 Investigation Highlights:
• Money from Nothing: A hacker found a bug in MWEB data validation that allowed him to "send" 85,034 LTC from a private block to the main network that didn't actually exist.
• Peaceful Settlement: Developers and miners froze the funds in time. The hacker cooperated: he returned the "fake" coins in exchange for a legal reward of 850 LTC.
• Charlie Lee’s Gesture: To keep the network balance perfect and avoid over-issuance, Litecoin creator Charlie Lee personally bought 850 LTC to cover the payment to the hacker.
💥 Why did the April collapse happen?
Although the first hole was closed, a second attack using the same method occurred in April. Updated nodes recognized the attack and blocked it, but this caused a technical failure:
1. Mining equipment began to “hang” when trying to process incorrect data.
2. The network split, which led to a rollback of 13 blocks.
3. Domino effect: While Litecoin stabilized, automatic cross-chain protocols managed to accept transactions from “invalid” blocks.
• NEAR Intents lost 7.78 BTC.
• THORChain lost about 0.007 BTC.
✅ What now?
Litecoin Core 0.21.5.4 has now been released, which completely fixes the vulnerability. The network is stable.
