Cosmos Hub Halted for 25 Hours to Recover Stolen Tokens Worth $9.5 Million

The Cosmos Hub experienced a 25-hour halt after validators pulled the emergency brake to prevent a governance attacker from moving stolen tokens.

The attack started on Neutron, a smart contract platform in the Cosmos ecosystem, where an attacker used a governance proposal to seize control of two applications and extracted roughly $9.5 million worth of contracts.

The total cost of entry for the attacker was about $20,200 in NTRN tokens, but the payout was much higher, exposing $9.5 million in contract values to draining.

When Neutron independently halted its operations, it trapped around $5 million in assets, but a portion of the stolen funds had already made it to a Cosmos Hub address.