On Tuesday, Solana-based trading platform, Mango Markets was hacked and $100 million in funds were taken.
Avraham Eisenberg, the mastermind of the exploit turns himself in, “what I did was legal”.

vraham Eisenberg’s bold move has raised eyebrows in the crypto space, the individual is behind the $117 million exploit on the Mango Markets platform. Avraham Eisenberg tweeted about his role in the million-dollar exploit of the Mango Markets platform.

Eisenberg referred to the exploit as a “highly profitable trading strategy,” which indicates that he may subscribe to the popular belief among hackers that “code is the law.”

He claimed that his actions didn’t go against any law, where the protocol was used as per code. However, he did accept that since the development team did not anticipate the move and its consequences, the platform was pushed into insolvency, and other users could not access their funds. Mango was then forced to halt its activities.

I believe all of our actions were legal open market actions, using the protocol as designed, even if the development team did not fully anticipate all the consequences of setting parameters the way they are…Unfortunately, the exchange this took place on, Mango Markets, became insolvent as a result, with the insurance fund being insufficient to cover all liquidations. This led to other users being unable to access their funds.

Before coming out in his tweeter explanation, the swindler was found discussing the details of the exploit on a discord chat. Eisenberg then claimed that he had worked with the development team to arrive at a remedy for the situation, in which a settlement agreement was negotiated with the insurance fund.

PeckShield said on Twitter that the address marked by Etherscan as “Eisenberg’s ponzishorter.eth” transferred 10 million USDC to FTX, which may belong to the previously announced Mango attacker Avraham Eisenberg.

— Sally (@Sally_12_17) October 16, 2022

In response to this, all user funds were reinstated as soon as possible through recapitalization of the exchange. Eisenberg is to return most of the funds after retaining a $47 million bug bounty for the attack.

Eisenberg crime history

Nearly a week ago, the Solana-based lending platform Mango Markets was targeted in a major flimflam, where Eisenberg and other yet-to-be-identified individuals were able to siphon off a whopping $117 million.

Eisenberg was also involved in a previous DeFi exploit when an address related to the ponzishorter account was involved in the manipulation of lending protocol Fuse’s liquidation mechanism in April 2022.

In addition to this, his name is mentioned in bold in the $14 million Fortress DAO exploit, a project for which he was the lead developer. The accusation against him claims that when the DAO shut operations, he exploited the project’s treasury redemption mechanism and manipulated the redistribution of remaining funds.