Rainbow Bridge fends off hacker attack

The bridge between Ethereum and the NEAR blockchain was the target of an attack over the weekend. The attacker was thwarted in just 31 seconds, losing roughly 8,000 US dollars in the process.

An attack on the Rainbow Bridge that took place over the weekend was successfully repelled in 31 seconds by a smart contract. This was reported by Alex Shevchenko, CEO of Aurora Labs, in a blog post. The bridge was built by Aurora Labs to connect Ethereum and the NEAR blockchain. The NEAR Protocol (NEAR) is a community-driven cloud computing platform for decentralized apps (dApps) and smart contract solutions.

According to Shevchenko, the attacker deposited a five-ether collateral on Saturday morning, hoping the response to Saturday morning’s attack would be complicated.

The CEO also described: "There was, however, no human intervention needed. Automated watchdogs flagged the malicious transaction, causing the attacker to forfeit his collateral."

After just 31 seconds, or four Ethereum blocks, the fraud attempt was unmasked. The five Ether deposited were seized from the attacker. Current value: roughly 8,000 US dollars. In May, Rainbow Bridge was the victim of a similar attack. Attacks on so-called bridges, which are supposed to connect two or more blockchains, have been on the rise recently.