Axie Co-Founder’s Personal Accounts Breached for $8M, Ronin Bridge Unaffected

Jeff “Jihoz” Zirlin, co-founder of Axie Infinity, experienced a security breach in two of his personal Ethereum addresses on Ronin, resulted in an $8 million loss.

The web3 security firm Ancilia, Inc. first alerted Ronin Network about the unusual withdrawal of over 2,790 Ethereum. The crypto was withdrawn to three addresses and immediately deposited to Tornado.

“Looks like not an exploit to the bridge, the message[s] are signed correctly, more likely a private key leaked,” said Ancilia.

Axie Infinity: “Ronin Is Not Compromised”

Jihoz soon confirmed the breach through a personal statement on social media. He emphasized that the attack targeted only his personal accounts and did not impact the Ronin blockchain or its operations.

This has been a tough morning for me. 

Two of my addresses have been compromised.

The attack is limited to my personal accounts, and has nothing to do with validation or operations of the Ronin chain.

Additionally, the leaked keys have nothing to do with Sky Mavis operations.…

— Jihoz.ron 🍚 (@Jihoz_Axie) February 23, 2024

“The attack is limited to my personal accounts, and has nothing to do with validation or operations of the Ronin chain,” Jihoz clarified.

He further addressed to the concerned community that the leaked keys were not connected to Sky Mavis operations.

“I want to assure everyone that we have strict security measures in place for all chain related activities.”

Axie Infinity co-founder and COO Aleksander Larsen reiterated that the network remained safe.

“The bridge has no issue and Ronin is not compromised,” said Larsen. “The bridge itself has top security, been through many audits and goes on pause when too much is being withdrawn.”

Despite the significant setback, Jihoz expressed his resolve to move forward. “Thank you to everyone that’s reached out. I’m safe. I will get through this,” he said. “Same as yesterday.”

According to CoinMarketCap, Ethereum is trading at $2,955 at the time of writing, up by 0.75% over the past 24 hours and 3.79% from a week ago. With the current price, the stolen Ethereum would worth around $8.24 million.

Ronin tokens (RON) encountered major fluctuations in the past month. Starting off at $2.27, the token rallied up to as high as $3.49 and then faced a correction, dropping to $2.40.

It again soared to near the $3.50 mark around Feb.20, yet quickly fell to the current level of $2.97, still making a monthly increase of 31.52%.