The Bybit exchange released a blacklisted wallet application programming interface (API) on Feb. 23, following the recent Lazarus Group hack that drained the centralized exchange of over $1.4 billion in crypto.
According to the announcement, the blacklist will assist white hat hackers attempting to recover the funds as part of Bybit’s bounty program and will be updated periodically to combat emerging threats. Bybit CEO Ben Zhou said:
“I am energized by the incredible camaraderie onchain and in real life. This can be a transformative moment for our industry if we get it right. Together, we can build a stronger defense system against cyber threats.”
The announcement of the bounty program is part of a broader effort to recover the stolen funds, which Ben Zhou revealed included working with law enforcement officials in Singapore and discussing potential solutions with the Ethereum Foundation.
Related: Security execs weigh in on ‘staggering’ scale of record Bybit hack
The crypto community calls for an Ethereum blockchain rollback
Following the $1.4 billion hack, calls to roll back the Ethereum blockchain network to an earlier state before the Feb. 21 cybersecurity breach amplified on social media.
During a Feb. 22 X Spaces event, the Bybit CEO was asked about the potential for a chain rollback to invalidate the stolen funds.
Zhou responded that he did not know whether a chain rollback was the right approach but said that any potential chain rollback should be decided by a community vote rather than a single individual.
However, Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko pushed back against the idea, calling it technically infeasible to rollback the blockchain network in this particular case.
“A compromised interface made it appear as though a transaction was doing one thing while it was actually doing another,” Beiko wrote on X.
The developer added that the transaction did not explicitly break any protocol rules, and any rollback would have broader implications for the ecosystem that would be disruptive.
Beiko concluded that there was no clean way to recover the funds through rolling back the blockchain to a previous state and said the 2016 DAO hack, which set a precedent for chain rollbacks on Ethereum, was a completely different situation.
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