DeutschCardano was the target of a deliberate attack – founder Charles Hoskinson announced last Friday. Within a few hours, developers had managed to fend off the attack. In the meantime, however, a chain split occurred, causing damage of unknown extent. Investigations against the attacker are reportedly already underway.
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Cardano Chain Split Makes Waves: What Happened
A chain split of the popular blockchain Cardano on November 21 has been causing a stir over the past few days. According to Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, the problem has since been resolved and thoroughly investigated. It is said to have been a targeted and long-planned attack.
“It was a deliberate attack by a disgruntled SPO (Stake Pool Operator) who has extensive knowledge of Cardano, had already observed the testnet fork and patch efforts, and was in direct contact with the core developers,” Hoskinson wrote on X in a conversation with Solana developer Anatoly Yakovenko.
The Cardano developers at Input Output Global (IOG) were able to successfully diagnose and fix the problem within a few hours, Hoskinson further explained.
The attacker is even personally known to Hoskinson. His attack was an angry reaction to the release of sensitive data by Hoskinson himself, the 38-year-old American wrote.
On a Discord server called Fake Fred, the attacker planned his endeavor for several months and searched for a vulnerability before finding the exploited bug. He focused the attack on Hoskinson.
“He spent months on the Fake Fred server, actively looking for ways to harm IOG’s brand and reputation. He targeted my personal pool, which led to a disruption of the entire Cardano network.
After the incident, the person responsible even apologized – but only because he had been identified as the cause of the chain split, Hoskinson believes.
“He apologized because the ITN pool in my previously linked video referred to him, and he knew that criminal investigations had already been initiated.”
Was Cardano Offline as a Result of the Attack?
According to an Intersect report, the attacker was able to cause a so-called chain split by exploiting a bug in the node software’s program code. This creates two different versions of a blockchain that no longer work together. The previously unified network was thus split into two different networks.
“There were slowdowns due to the temporary network split. Cardano continued to produce blocks and maintained its integrity.”
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The program code of the Cardano blockchain was not affected by the bug. It could only affect the node implementation itself. According to Hoskinson’s statement, the consequences were nevertheless severe.
“Every single user was affected. SPOs lose block rewards. Double-spendings could occur. DeFi was disrupted. It will take weeks to clear up this mess, and even longer for the damage to the brand and reputation to be repaired,” he announced.
Who is behind ADA’s Chain Split?
In an X-Space, Charles Hoskinson named Australian programmer Greg Beresnev as the cause of the chain split. Beresnev has already admitted his guilt. The Australian works as a software developer for Yarris Technologies.
There, the ADA founder also revealed further details. The error occurred due to a deliberately malformed transaction.
“It probably took several hours to figure something like that out. (…) You need very specific knowledge to recognize and exploit this bug,” Hoskinson argues.
Beresnev acquired his knowledge during test runs in the Cardano testnet and finally exploited his experience on the mainnet.
On X, there are several critical voices claiming that it was an accident. Developer Stutxo, for example, blames IOG itself. Therefore, numerous comments also contain mockery of Hoskinson.
“Someone performed a transaction on Cardano for the first time and the whole thing went wrong,” Stutxo says. Former Monero lead developer Riccardo Spagni reposted this assessment via X.
The alleged perpetrator also publicly apologized via X and asserted that it was not a public attack.
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