The Cardano blockchain recently thwarted a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that aimed to steal staked tokens. Despite the attack, Cardano’s native token ADA saw a modest increase of 0.4% in value, reaching $0.38 at the time of reporting.
The attack occurred on June 25 at Block 10,487,530, as reported by Fluid Token’s CTO, Raul Antonio Rosa Padilla. The attacker tried to overwhelm the network by carrying out transactions with 0.9 ADA each, targeting 194 smart contracts with multiple transactions per block. Fortunately, Cardano’s network continued to function normally, causing the attacker to lose funds instead of achieving their malicious goal.
Phillip Disarro, the founder of Anastasia Labs, a Cardano-focused development company, suggested that users could help thwart the attack by deregistering any of the 194 stake credentials used by the attacker. Users were incentivized with 2 ADA tokens per credential until the attacker’s 400 ADA was depleted.
Despite the attack, Cardano’s network operated without any major disruptions. Intersect, a Cardano membership group, mentioned that some stake pool operators (SPOs) were negatively affected by the attack. Efforts are now underway to develop solutions to prevent similar incidents in the future.
The post-attack period saw the DDoS attacker halting their actions, unintentionally funding open-source development work at companies like Anastasia Labs and Midgard. Overall, Cardano’s blockchain continued to function as expected, with only minor impacts on transaction timings and chain density.
