K9 Finance Slashes $23K Bounty Deal With Hacker After $2.4M Breach—White Hat or Exit Strategy?

When $2.4M vanishes, you either call the cops or cut a deal. K9 Finance chose the latter—offering the hacker a $23,000 bounty to return the funds. Talk about a unconventional negotiation tactic.

Anatomy of a Heist

The exploit didn’t just happen—it bypassed protocols, slipped through smart contract loopholes, and left a trail of digital breadcrumbs. No sophisticated social engineering, just cold, hard code manipulation.

The Bounty Play: Desperation or Genius?

Offering a bounty isn’t new, but doing it publicly? That’s a bold move. Either K9 Finance is playing 4D chess with its reputation, or it’s just another day in crypto—where ‘trustless’ sometimes means ‘trust us, we’ve got a plan.’

Finance’s Ironic Twist

Nothing says ‘healthy ecosystem’ like paying off attackers instead of, you know, preventing the attack in the first place. But hey—if traditional finance can bail out banks, why can’t crypto bail out… itself?

Will this set a precedent? Maybe. Will it encourage more hacks? Possibly. But one thing’s clear: in the wild west of DeFi, the rules are still being written—with a black hat pen occasionally dipped in white ink.

The exploit 

The exploit happened on Friday, when hackers gained access to validator signing keys, resulting in losses of about $2.4 million in Ethereum (ETH) and shiba inu (SHIB). They purchased 4.6 million Bone ShibaSwap (BONE) tokens using a flash loan, obtained majority validator control, and signed an evil transaction that siphoned off the funds.

As a response, Shibarium developers suspended staking and unstaking activities and transferred stake manager funds into a multisig-controlled hardware wallet to ensure security. The developers are collaborating with security companies such as Hexens, Seal 911, and PeckShield to probe the incident.

Shiba Inu developer Kaal Dhairya said the team has also contacted authorities but remains open to negotiating with the attacker. Their main focus is restoring security and protecting users’ assets.

The exploit triggered a price drop across Shiba Inu ecosystem tokens. Currently, SHIB is trading at $0.00001311, down 6.57% in the past day. K9 Finance (KNINE) is trading at $0.052556, down about 5%, while BONE is priced at $0.1928, with a 6% drop.

Also Read: Hacker Exploits Bitcoin-based Yala Protocol’s Yu Token on Polygon