A security researcher who goes by 0xflorent worked with the team behind a 2016 Ethereum (ETH) ICO contract to unlock about $2 million in ether that had sat trapped for nine years, in a coordinated whitehat recovery that exploited an integer-overflow flaw the original developers had never patched.
The contract belongs to HongCoin, a 2016 token sale that fell short of its funding goal and was supposed to auto-refund investors' ether but failed to do so because of a bug in the refund function.
0xflorent's path unfroze 1,003.62 ETH, with 48 original investors now eligible to claim. Two have done so, retrieving a combined 96.5 ETH worth roughly $193,000, he said in an X thread Sunday.
First white-hat exploit on Ethereum: I unlocked 1,003.62
Ξ ($2,000,000) trapped in a 2016 ICO smart contract
