$500,000 USDC Heist Foiled by $129,000 MEV Bot

A hacker who stole approximately $500,000 in USDC from a Base network wallet ended up losing about 75% of the loot to an automated market-making bot.

The bot executed a sandwich attack on the hacker's transaction, which was vulnerable due to insufficient slippage protection. The MEV (Miner Extractable Value) bot inserted buy and sell orders around the hacker's trade, artificially inflating the price and profiting from the resulting price difference.

The hack highlights the risks that even malicious actors face in the DeFi ecosystem, where automated trading bots can sometimes mitigate the impact of hacks at the expense of both legitimate traders and attackers.