The Splinterlands Security Breach

Yesterday, an incident has caused Splinterlands to be down for the entire day. This has made a lot of players a bit restless, given that there was no announcement prior to the game's downtime, and when the announcement came, the cause of the downtime was not explicitly explained, aside from saying that it was a system failure and that it would take about 24 hours before the game becomes online. But before the incident, a huge amount of DEC was exchanged for cheap, so by connecting the dots, players were able to make a guess that the game might be hacked?

The next day, after the game was made back online, an announcement was made by Dave McCoy, confirming players' suspicion that there was a security breach and that 39.5 million DEC was fraudulently credited and successfully processed for bridge withdrawal. At peg value, that will be around $ 39,500, but since DEC is less than half of its peg value, that value will be less than $ 20k. Still a significant amount.

It seems that the amount that was taken came from the team coffers, but it also seems that the culprit was tied to attacking the assets of other players and just did not succeed, maybe because the game went into maintenance mode immediately, or maybe because they have identified the issue and prevent it before it gets worst. Kudos to the Devs who work through the night to fix the problem and work during the day to implement the game updates. Like, they have implemented a bunch of stuff, such as game fixes, new rulesets, and alterations renewal presale.

What we really do not have right now is the particulars of how this security breach took place. How come does DEC fraudulently credited? Is there some kind of weird Fiat or Crypto manipulation that allows the culprit to buy DEC? I don't really know, so I'm just spitballing stuff. Of course, once the culprit sent the DEC to their account, they will immediately try to withdraw it to an external bridge, even if they have to sell it for much cheaper. And because external bridges were Decentralized, tracking those culprits was very difficult, if not close to impossible.

Due to security reasons, I do not think that we can get any information other than what was said in the announcement. Like, if more people know about the vulnerability in the game's security, wouldn't they also try to exploit it? But the main takeaway here is that the team had implemented various changes to further secure the game against similar types of attacks. That said, with the age of AI, these types of attacks seem to be happening more and more, so we may once again be caught in the same situation. Also, in a few weeks, the team will be taking a break for the holiday season, which means that they will be gone for a longer period, so it is possible that the culprit may once again try to attack the game during this time. And because of that, I think that the team needs to put more measures in place to help prevent any type of attack on the game from becoming successful.

In a few days, the next town hall will be held, and the team may shed more light on this incident when asked by the community, but I doubt they will share important security details.

Overall, I think that the team has done a really good job of limiting the damage to the game, given that the attack took place when they were all supposed to be at their resting time. The game also seems to be back online, and we can now play as usual.

Thank you, and see you on the next post!