Rocket Pauses Trading After $287K Market Attack
Rocket paused deposits, withdrawals and trading while it investigates a perpetual-market manipulation that removed about $287,000 from its Bridge. In a security update published Sept. 6, the DeFi platform said the attack occurred at approximately 19:00 UTC on Sept. 5 and involved a market that had been dormant. The disclosure is Rockets preliminary account, not an independent postmortem. It identifies the trading pattern and the amount withdrawn, but it does not name the attacker, publish transaction hashes or establish whether any funds have been frozen. How the dormant market was manipulated Rocket said the attacker used a burner account to post orders at artificially inflated prices and then traded against itself. That sequence created what the platform described as fake profit in one account while forcing the disposable account into bankruptcy. The profitable account subsequently withdrew roughly $287,000 in positive profit and loss from the Bridge. The account suggests a market-control failure rather than a confirmed smart-contract exploit. Thin or inactive markets can be dangerous when an attacker can influence execution prices and use the resulting position value elsewhere in a platform. Rocket said the loss would be socialized, although it has not yet detailed how that calculation will affect individual users. Trading remains paused
