Mango Markets Exploiter Owns Up

An individual named Avraham Eisenberg has come out and claimed responsibility for the $117 million exploit on the Mango Markets platform. 

“Trading Strategy” Or Hack? 

After being identified by the investigative skills of popular on-chain sleuth Chris Brunet, Avraham Eisenberg tweeted about his role in the million-dollar exploit of the Mango Markets platform. 

Eisenberg, however, referred to the exploit as a “highly profitable trading strategy,” which indicates that he may subscribe to the popular belief among hackers that “code is law.” 

He claimed that his actions were legal, where the protocol was used as per code. However, he did accept that since the development team did not anticipate the move and its consequences, the platform was pushed into insolvency, and other users could not access their funds. 

His tweets read, 

“I believe all of our actions were legal open market actions, using the protocol as designed, even if the development team did not fully anticipate all the consequences of setting parameters the way they are…Unfortunately, the exchange this took place on, Mango Markets, became insolvent as a result, with the insurance fund being insufficient to cover all liquidations. This led to other users being unable to access their funds.”

Eisenberg To Return Funds

Before coming out with his Twitter explanation, Eisenberg was found discussing the details of the exploit on a Discord chat. Eisenberg then claimed that he had worked with the development team to arrive at a remedy for the situation, in which a settlement agreement was negotiated with the insurance fund. As a result, all user funds will be reinstated as soon as possible through recapitalization of the exchange. 

He wrote, 

“This is similar to how auto deleveraging works on exchanges such as Binance and Bitmex, clawing back some profits from profitable traders in order to ensure all users funds are protected.”

Eisenberg will return most of the funds after retaining a $47 million bug bounty for the attack. 

Eisenberg’s Previous Exploits

Roughly a week ago, the Solana-based lending platform Mango Markets was targeted in a major hack, where Eisenberg and other operatives were able to siphon off a whopping $117 million. Eisenberg was also embroiled in a previous DeFi exploit when an address related to the ponzishorter account was involved in the manipulation of lending protocol Fuse’s liquidation mechanism in April 2022. Additionally, he was also named in the $14 million Fortress DAO exploit, a project for which he was the lead developer. The accusation against him claims that when the DAO shut operations, he exploited the project’s treasury redemption mechanism and manipulated the redistribution of remaining funds.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.