ChainThink reports that on September 8, the Cronos lending protocol Tectonic released a report on the attack: On August 30, the attacker manipulated the price of the governance token TONIC to collateralize loans at an inflated valuation, borrowing assets with a nominal value of $120.4 million across multiple markets in a single transaction.
Cronos subsequently paused the network and rolled back its state; before the pause, the attacker had transferred approximately $9.19 million across chains, and the funds have not yet been recovered.
The report states that the root cause of the attack was that TONIC could be borrowed and redeposited as collateral within the same transaction, valued at spot price with a 20% loan-to-value ratio, and lacked both a cap tied to market depth and a price spike check.
The team plans to phase out low-liquidity tokens that are difficult to price as eligible collateral, and to set borrowing limits for each market; specific details will be announced once the implementation plan is finalized.
The team is currently collaborating with forensic agencies, law enforcement, stablecoin issuers, exchanges, and cross-chain bridges to recover funds.