Convex Finance Sets Up New URLs After Website Address Is Hijacked

Decentralized staking platform Convex Finance set up new website addresses (URLs) after the previous address was involved in an attack that misdirected users to a malicious website.

The issue was remediated and is being investigated, the developers said in a tweet. Convex is a popular protocol that allows users to earn yields from the stablecoin swap service Curve Finance.

The Domain Name Service (DNS) translates website names that users type into the internet's native numeric address coding. By intercepting that process, it's possible to redirect users to alternative websites that might have malicious intent.

A possible exploit issue was flagged last night on Twitter by alexintosh.eth, with approvals for contracts apparently spoofing wallet addresses and misleading users to approve the wrong wallet actions.

Shortly thereafter, Convex asked users to “review approvals” while developers evaluated a “potential front end issue.”

Some five wallets were flagged by Convex to have been affected by the exploit. Funds on verified contracts on Convex were unaffected, developers said.

Wallet “0xcdc0f019f0ec0a903ca689e2bced3996efc53939” – flagged as “Convex Phisher Deposits” on blockchain analytics service Etherscan – seemed to have obtained small amounts of cryptocurrencies from affected users, blockchain data shows.

That wallet transferred just under $1,000 worth of USD coin and CRV via decentralized exchange Uniswap in European morning hours, the data shows.

Crypto wallets work on token approvals, or permissions granted to decentralized apps (dapps) by users to access tokens in their crypto wallets.

In a phishing attack, exploiters may spoof the front end of a protocol’s website and mislead users to approve the wrong action – granting the attacker access to the exploited wallet and allowing them to drain tokens from that wallet.

The developers set up “Convexfinance.fi" and “frax.convexfinance.fi” as alternatives for users. “Users are encouraged to use these URLs to interact with the site while the investigation into the DNS hijack is conducted,” the developers said in a tweet.