ApolloX completes new funding round, gets hacked of $2.8M APX tokens

Wednesday, June 8, will remain a day to remember for the ApolloX management as the leading DeFi platform experienced a bitter-sweet moment.

In the early hours of Wednesday, the crypto firm revealed it had raised an undisclosed amount in a funding round that involved some notable investors in the industry like Binance Labs and Kronos Research.

Seen the news yet?👀

ApolloX secured seed funding to drive continued expansion and shape Web3 trading!🙌

👉Read more on Yahoo here: https://t.co/nJ7JKjGym0

— ApolloX (@ApolloX_com) June 8, 2022

However, that joy was short-lived as a few hours after its announcement; the network was hacked by malicious players who carted away 53 million APX tokens worth $2.8 million.

This hack has led to the token price falling by over 11% within the last 24 hours, but the network tried to arrest the situation by making an emergency repurchase of 12,748,585 APX tokens worth $600,000.

🚨Official Update: We have resolved the issue and resumed the withdraw function on DEX.

What happened?
1️⃣ ApolloX team spent US$600k for an emergency repurchase of 12,748,585 APX tokens. These APX will be allocated towards fulfilling withdrawals of APX staking rewards.

— ApolloX (@ApolloX_com) June 8, 2022

The network later announced that the repurchased tokens would be used to fulfill withdrawals of its APX staking rewards.

Hacker exploited a bug in the network trading reward contract

ApolloX has revealed that the hacker exploited a bug in the network’s trading rewards contract to accumulate 255 signatures which were used to withdraw 53 million APX tokens from the withdrawal contract.

🚨Update: Investigation results from yesterday’s incident

Yesterday at around 11:30AM UTC, a hacker exploited a flaw in ApolloX’s Trading Rewards Contract to accumulate 255 signatures, and then used these signatures to withdraw 53 million APX tokens from the Withdrawal Contract.

— ApolloX (@ApolloX_com) June 9, 2022

Meanwhile, to prevent a future recurrence, the network said it had switched the truth holder of the staking contract while also maintaining that all of its users’ funds were safe.

ApolloX hacker begged for gas fees

Indications have emerged that the ApolloX hacker begged for the gas fees he used to carry out the attack from crypto community members.

This guy hacked a project and now everyone think that was me. He used 1 matic I sent him. https://t.co/yb6KXAQTSb

— CIA Officer (@officer_cia) June 8, 2022

According to Officer_cia, the hacker sent him a message where he begged for 1 Matic that was eventually used as gas fees for the exploit.

Officer_cia continued that he was willing to ‘fully assist’ in the investigation and even ‘publicly disclose’ his identity to prove his innocence.

It also later emerged that the hacker was begging for the 1 Matic across multiple crypto-related chat rooms.

As of press time, Polygonscan has flagged the hacker’s address for being involved in the hack of ApolloX.