A friendly hacker group called "Robin Hood" has successfully drained The DAO to save 7.2 mln ether from the platform after the cyberattack of 17 June. One-third of the stolen assets still remains with the initial attackers.
The start of the “white hat” attack was announced by one of the Ethereum Foundation developers and The DAO curator Alex Van de Sande. He wrote on Twitter: “DAO IS BEING SECURELY DRAINED. DO NOT PANIC.” However, some users were bemused by the style of the message.
@avsa NOTHING SAYS DO NOT PANIC LIKE ALL CAPS
— Kyle Riecker (@KyleRiecker) June 21, 2016
Later Van de Sande explained that on 17 June, during the attack on The DAO, he reached a group of “very smart people” who intended to carry out a counterattack “to avoid any more of the ether being bled.” They considered replicating the technique used by the hackers. The team of Ethereum developers naming themselves “Robin Hood” infiltrated all open split proposals and chose the best one to execute. About 7 pm on 22 June, the group detected a new, though very cautious, attack which seemed to be “someone testing the waters and seeing if it could drain more.”
“Robin Hood” reacted immediately and managed to rescue 7.2 mln ether transferring the tokens to a child DAO.
According to the official Reddit announcement, 63% of the tokens were saved that way, and 6% more were transferred to another child DAO. 31.6% of tokens (3,641,694 ether, about $64 mln) are still being held by the initial attackers.
Other tokens were distributed between unknown child DAOs. Redditors are urged to share whatever knowledge they have of other unknown DAOs: “If you have any information on the yet to be identified child DAOs, please let me and the community know!”
Another Ethereum developer, Fabian Vogelsteller, informed that at the moment almost 80% of The DAO tokens are safely beyond the hacker's reach:
80% of the #DAO ether is safe for now. And there is a way to attack the attacker and get all money back!
— Fabian Vogelsteller (@feindura) June 21, 2016
Watch out https://t.co/9qoSbrD1Zw!
Summarising the course of events, Alex Van de Sande concluded:
“One day I hope to write up thriller story behind these last few days.”
The developer also praised “the reason heroes” who “cracked the code and stayed up late executing the plan” and chose to remain anonymous afterwards.
The DAO investment platform was hacked on 17 June. After millions of ethers were drained from its accounts and the price of the currency fell from $21.5 to $15, exchanges were asked to postpone ether trade. Still, the Ethereum platform itself reportedly remains safe.
