Blockchain gaming platform Gala Games has successfully recovered approximately $22 million in Ether (ETH) from an attacker responsible for a major security breach on May 20.
This breach involved the unauthorized minting and partial sale of 5 billion GALA tokens, worth approximately $200 million.
Gala Games announced the recovery in a blog post, highlighting the effectiveness of their quick response and the assistance of law enforcement agencies.
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On May 21, the attacker's wallet returned 5913.2 ETH, valued at approximately $22.3 million, closely matching the market value of the 600 million GALA tokens sold a day earlier. Gala Games CEO Eric Schiermeyer mentioned in a Discord message that the team is planning to use the returned ETH to buy back and burn an equivalent amount of GALA tokens.
Gala reported that it utilized a new feature implemented with its V2 contract upgrade to successfully freeze 4.4 billion of the 5 billion GALA tokens minted. A governance vote is planned to determine whether these blocklisted tokens should be permanently considered as burned.
While Gala Games has not officially disclosed the identity or the exact method of the exploit, Jason Brink, an advisor at Gala, suggested that the breach may have been executed by a security contractor who accidentally connected to the wallet without a VPN.
In a post on X, Gala investor DWF Labs announced the purchase of 28 million GALA tokens on the open market to stabilize the token's value and demonstrate support for its portfolio companies.
GALA's value has increased by over 8% within the last 24 hours, trading at $0.0452 at the time of writing.
Overall, Gala's rapid response and community-focused approach have not only reduced the impact of the breach but also restored confidence among its users and investors.
In related news, the memecoin creation platform pump.fun also recently faced a security breach. An ex-employee confessed to stealing $1.9 million from the platform and reported being arrested and released on bail.
