The protocol party has urgently suspended the smart contract to control risks and stated that they are conducting a full investigation.
Written by: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
On the evening of May 22, the Sui ecosystem liquidity protocol Cetus Protocol was suddenly exposed to a serious security incident. To prevent the situation from deteriorating, the protocol party has urgently suspended the operation of its smart contract. According to Lookonchain monitoring, Cetus Protocol suffered a hacker attack on SUI, with losses exceeding $260 million. The hacker is converting the stolen funds into USDC and cross-chaining to Ethereum to exchange for ETH, with approximately $60 million of USDC already cross-chained.
Meanwhile, as the core liquidity pools were drained by attackers, a series of tokens in the Sui ecosystem that rely on these pools for trading have experienced devastating price crashes, with declines generally exceeding 70%, and many even reaching over 90%, such as LBTC and AXOL approaching -99%.
Event Progress
Sporadic messages began circulating in the cryptocurrency community about a possible hacker attack on Cetus Protocol. Early signs indicated an unusual draining of funds from the protocol's trading pool deployed on the Sui chain, quickly raising market participants' vigilance and unease.
Almost simultaneously with the attack news, the price of Cetus Protocol's native governance token CETUS plummeted like a cliff. Market data shows that the CETUS token dropped by an astonishing 40% in just two hours, rapidly falling from its pre-attack price level, from $0.257 to a low of $0.146, with a weak rebound afterwards, hovering around $0.17.
As time passed, the severity of the event became increasingly clear. BWEnews pointed out that the economic loss caused by this security incident against Cetus Protocol is estimated to have exceeded $150 million.
Subsequently, monitored by the on-chain data analysis platform Lookonchain, Cetus Protocol's losses exceeded $260 million. The hacker is converting the stolen funds into USDC and cross-chaining to Ethereum to exchange for ETH, with approximately $60 million of USDC already cross-chained.
According to the Chief Security Information Officer of Slowmist, their team's preliminary analysis suggests the issue may be due to a vulnerability caused by calculation precision problems.
Facing the overwhelming negative news, continuously falling token prices, and widespread community panic, the Cetus Protocol official team released a statement through their official channels confirming that the protocol indeed detected a security incident and emphasized that "for safety considerations, its smart contract has been temporarily suspended". The team is conducting an emergency investigation and will release further investigation results and subsequent handling statements to the public as soon as possible.
CZ also stated:
"We are doing our best to help SUI. The situation is not good. Hope everyone stays safe!"
Foresight News will continue to track and report on the latest developments of the Cetus Protocol security incident.
