K9 Finance posts 5 ETH bounty after $2.4M Shibarium hack
K9 Finance gives the exploiter 30 days and ~$23K to return funds taken in the Shibarium bridge attack.
The DeFi project in the Shiba Inu ecosystem said the bounty will decrease after seven days and can be claimed by calling an on-chain accept() function. The exploit occurred on Saturday when attackers gained access to validator signing keys on the Shibarium layer-2 network.
Using a flash loan to buy about 4.6 million BONE tokens, the attacker obtained majority validator power and signed a transaction that moved assets out of the bridge. K9 Finance estimated the loss at around $2.4 million.
Shiba Inu developer Kaal Dhairya said the team contacted authorities and remains open to negotiating with the attacker. K9 paused stake and unstake functions on Shibarium and moved its stake manager funds into a hardware wallet secured by multisignature arrangement.
The project is investigating the incident with security firms Hexens, Seal 911 and PeckShield. Security teams continue probing how validator signing keys were compromised and tracing the stolen assets.
Using a flash loan to buy about 4.6 million BONE tokens, the attacker obtained majority validator power and signed a transaction that moved assets out of the bridge. K9 Finance estimated the loss at around $2.4 million.
Shiba Inu developer Kaal Dhairya said the team contacted authorities and remains open to negotiating with the attacker. K9 paused stake and unstake functions on Shibarium and moved its stake manager funds into a hardware wallet secured by multisignature arrangement.
The project is investigating the incident with security firms Hexens, Seal 911 and PeckShield. Security teams continue probing how validator signing keys were compromised and tracing the stolen assets.
Market prices declined following the exploit. The Shiba Inu token fell about 7% from $0.0000145 to $0.0000131. K9's KNINE token dropped roughly 10% while BONE fell about 38% since the incident, according to on-chain price trackers.
K9's bounty offer gives the attacker a pathway to return funds and receive compensation. The protocol's on-chain conditions emphasize finality once the attacker accepts the settlement code through the accept() function.
The attacker manipulated the validator consensus mechanism by temporarily acquiring a large BONE token position through flash loan borrowing. This enabled signing fraudulent transactions that moved bridge assets to addresses controlled by the exploiter.
Shibarium relies on validator consensus to move assets across its bridge infrastructure. The network's security depends on preventing any single entity from controlling majority validator power.
K9 Finance operates as a DeFi protocol within the broader Shiba Inu ecosystem, offering staking and yield farming services for BONE and other ecosystem tokens.
K9's bounty offer gives the attacker a pathway to return funds and receive compensation. The protocol's on-chain conditions emphasize finality once the attacker accepts the settlement code through the accept() function.
The attacker manipulated the validator consensus mechanism by temporarily acquiring a large BONE token position through flash loan borrowing. This enabled signing fraudulent transactions that moved bridge assets to addresses controlled by the exploiter.
Shibarium relies on validator consensus to move assets across its bridge infrastructure. The network's security depends on preventing any single entity from controlling majority validator power.
K9 Finance operates as a DeFi protocol within the broader Shiba Inu ecosystem, offering staking and yield farming services for BONE and other ecosystem tokens.
Author
Sebile Fane cut her teeth in blockchain by building tiny NFT experiments with friends in her living room, long before the buzzwords took hold. She’s driven by a curiosity for the human stories behind smart contracts — whether it’s a small-town artist minting her first token or a DAO voting on climate grants — and weaves technical insight with genuine empathy.
