Fetch.ai exploit drains $2M as NTX crashes 95% – What went wrong?

What started out as a small exploit of the Fetch.ai’s Ethereum platform evolved into a larger exploit involving two separate projects.

The exploit occurred due to a weak security check in the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance [FET] token converter. Specifically, the FET system accepted a single “approval” without verifying if those approved tokens were actually locked or burned.

After obtaining the private key behind that signature, the attacker created their own approval and withdrew the bridge’s entire FET balance in one transaction. The attacker extracted 8.72 million FET worth about $1.54 million.

Later, the same wallet cluster would receive an additional 408.5 million newly minted NuNet [NTX]. Those tokens were worth roughly $463,000. The shared destination links both incidents to one operator.

The rapid asset movement suggests an effort to consolidate the proceeds quickly. Collectively, these attacks resulted in losses totaling around $2 million.

As such, these attacks highlight issues regarding contract security, unauthorized token issuances, and potential sell pressure affecting both ecosystems.

NTX takes the bigger hit

Price data has shown how the exploitation impacted market pressure on each token. The price of NTX fell from approximately $0.00130000 to $0.00005559. This was a 95.7% drop in value over the course of 408.5 million unauthorized tokens entering circulation.