Shibarium Bridge Hacked, $2.4 Million Evaporated. Photo: Mitrade
Attack on Shibarium
- On September 12, Shibarium bridge - the bridge between the Shibarium layer-2 network and Ethereum - became the target of a sophisticated flash loan attack, causing about 2.4 million USD to evaporate from the platform.
UPDATE 09/13/25
— SHIB (@Shibtoken) September 13, 2025
What we know so far about the recent incident 👇
How the exploit was executed:
• The attacker used funds from the bridge hack in the same Block as the attack to acquire 4.6M BONE to temporarily gain validator voting power, attempting to do it in one… https://t.co/4Ft1VMxeBv
- The attacker borrowed 4.6 million BONE, Shibarium's Governance Token , via a flash loan . From there, they apparently gained control of 10 out of 12 validator signing keys, equivalent to 2/3 of the network's voting power. With this advantage, the hacker successfully siphoned 224.57 ETH and 92.6 billion SHIB from the bridge contract, then transferred all of them to a personal address.
- Some sources further revealed that not all validators were manipulated. Validators such as K9 Finance and Unification refused to sign the malicious state, thereby limiting the damage somewhat.
Timely response project
- Immediately after discovering the incident, the Shiba Inu team suspended the Staking and unstaking functions, locking the BONE borrowed by the hacker. This was a key factor, because BONE was in a delegated state with an unstaking delay mechanism, making it impossible for the attacker to immediately withdraw or sell these Token .
- Additionally, Shibarium has moved assets from a proxy contract to a hardware wallet with a 6/9 multisig transaction approval setup, preventing a single individual or key from being able to move the entire fund.
- Notably, the hacker also received about 700,000 USD worth of KNINE Token (related to K9 Finance). However, when trying to sell them off, K9 Finance DAO quickly blacklisted the hacker's address , rendering all of this KNINE worthless.
- In addition to ETH, SHIB and KNINE, other Token such as LEASH, ROAR, TREAT, BAD, SHIFU are also affected. However, so far there is no evidence that they have been moved.
- Kaal Dhairya, a key programmer of Shiba Inu, assessed that this was a sophisticated attack and was likely planned for months. He said the development team had contacted law enforcement, and also left open the possibility of a bounty reward for the hacker if the stolen funds were returned.
🚨 Shibarium Bridge Security Update 🚨
— Kaal (@kaaldhairya) September 13, 2025
Earlier today, a sophisticated (probably planned for months) attack was carried out using a flash loan to purchase 4.6M BONE. The attacker gained access to validator signing keys, achieved majority validator power, and signed a malicious…
- In parallel, the Shiba Inu team also invited blockchain security companies including Hexens, Seal 911 and PeckShield to participate in the investigation. They committed to publishing a full report after completion, thereby clarifying whether the vulnerability originated from the server or was attacked on the programmer's personal computer.
Market volatility after incident
- Immediately after the attack, BONE prices fluctuated wildly. BONE prices skyrocketed from $0.165 to $0.294 in just one hour, before falling back to its current $0.19.
- Meanwhile, SHIB coin recorded an increase of about 10% in the past week, showing that community confidence has not completely collapsed after the security incident.
BONE price movement in the last 7 days, screenshot from CoinGecko on 09:30 AM on 09/15/2025
SHIB price movement in the last 7 days, screenshot from CoinGecko at 09:30 AM on 09/15/2025
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