Experts Claim Allegations on MakerDao Vulnerabilities Are Substantial

gepubliceerd op by Cointele | gepubliceerd op

At the start of December, the Maker Foundation hosted a number of governance polls on its website to ease rising concerns following allegations put forth by developer Micah Zoltu in regards to how hackers with enough financial resources could potentially carry out an attack on the MakerDAO network and steal close to $340 million.

In its essence, the GSM allows MKR token holders to review any new changes that have been proposed for the MakerDAO ecosystem, thereby giving network participants a chance to act if any potential changes are deemed malicious.

The $340 million questionIn regards to the matter, Zoltu published a blog on Dec. 9 claiming that any hacker with a disposable $20 million could potentially launch a full-scale attack on the MakerDAO network and pocket a cool $340 million worth of Ether.

Zoltu's primary point of contention is that MakerDAO's operational framework is plagued by an extremely niche technical glitch - a small GSM-based time delay within the system each time it selects a new contract to execute.

Further elaborating on the network's vulnerabilities, Zoltu added that hackers with 80,000 Maker currently have the option of doing whatever they please with Maker's native contracts.

Maker Foundation denies the issueEver since the issue came to the attention of the global crypto community, the MakerDAO team has refused to acknowledge any of Zoltu's claims.

On the issue, Pascal Thellmann, CEO of project reviews and guides platform CoinDiligent, told Cointelegraph that in his article, Zoltu has only really talked about the cost of obtaining the MKR tokens needed to perform the attack.

"The attack Zoltu outlines is not economically attractive for a regular individual. The only malicious actor that could execute this attack is a rogue nation-state, like North Korea, since they would not have to worry about potential legal consequences and are able to give use to the funds, regardless of them being tainted."

Xun also believes that the problem is relatively easy to fix, noting that that Zoltu himself raised the problem before it was deprioritized by the Maker Foundation.

Denied to commentWhile the vulnerabilities put forth by Zoltu may not be as serious as previously imagined, the fact that MakerDAO's PR team have refused to fully acknowledge his assertions appears strange to both experts and the community.

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