A cunning individual is orchestrating a plan to seize 3 million ARB tokens during the forthcoming Arbitrum airdrop, presenting a unique challenge to the blockchain community.
A Clever Heist in the Making
A potential crypto thief is preparing to intercept 3 million ARB tokens in the upcoming Arbitrum airdrop. The perpetrator sent Ether to approximately 2,400 wallets, enabling a contract that allows recipients to claim the airdrop scheduled for Thursday. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t pose an issue, but the person seemingly possesses the wallets’ private keys.
The approved contract will automatically claim the airdrop on the thief’s behalf, circumventing any bots designed to sweep funds entering the wallets. Arkham Intelligence initially exposed the scheme, along with a GitHub post. The ARB token will govern the Arbitrum One and Nova networks through a DAO.
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A reported hacker on Arbitrum has been sending money over the past 12 hours to around 2400 presumably compromised wallets.
These wallets then approve the ARB token in anticipation of receiving the airdrop.
address – 0x59d4087f3ff91da6a492b596cbde7140c34afb19
Stay safe!
— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) March 20, 2023
Limited Options for Wallet Owners
Since the malicious actor knows the private keys for the wallets, owners cannot block them outright. However, they can revoke the established contract, but they would still need to manually claim the airdrop before the hacker does. This airdrop hijacking attempt is unusual in a landscape frequently plagued by exploits.
If successful, the thief could claim 0.26% of the user airdrop by diverting them from wallets they don’t own. This action would undermine the objective of transferring governance to the most committed Arbitrum community members and simultaneously deprive these wallets of their rightful claim.
Complications Arising from Arbitrum
As the airdrop is happening on Arbitrum, a layer 2 scaling project, it creates difficulties for the affected wallets. If the airdrop were on the Ethereum blockchain, wallet owners might use Flashbots to gain an advantage in claiming the airdrop first, but Arbitrum doesn’t allow this.
Some community members have urged Offchain Labs to blacklist these wallets, preventing the bad actor from acquiring all tokens. However, this action could also prevent legitimate users from claiming their tokens.
Offchain Labs CEO Steven Goldfeder, at the time of the airdrop announcement, stated that there would be no alterations to the airdrop allocation. The company has yet to address this particular issue, leaving the outcome uncertain for affected wallet owners and the broader Arbitrum community.
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