A user of Ethereum’s Parity wallet “accidentally” quarantined funds worth $280 mln, revealing further vulnerabilities in the platform.

Parity, which has suffered teething problems since its launch by former Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, is still trying to regain access to the “frozen” ETH.

“… A user suicided the library-turned-into-wallet, wiping out the library code which in turn rendered all multi-sig contracts unusable since their logic (any state-modifying function) was inside the library,” a security alert from Parity read Tuesday.

In short, the codebase for accessing Parity multi-sig wallets is currently deleted, rendering funds out of reach.

As the user responsible, known as devops199 described it on GitHub in a help request, they “accidentally killed it.”

Parity is currently seeking to calm users in what has ironically turned multi-sig security into a liability for multiple Parity business and private users.

“We are working on confirming the exact details and will inform the community as soon as we have them,” the latest Twitter update from the wallet confirms.

The bug specifically affects multi-signature wallets created with a digital contract after July 20. Multi-signature wallets have cryptographic security measures that require multiple users to sign a transaction in order for it to be processed and approved—an approach that allows for escrow contracts to control payments from accounts belonging to a group.

By calling a function from within Parity’s wallet library, a wallet owner could turn a normal single-owner wallet created with Parity’s wallet contract library code into a multi-signature wallet and take over ownership of it. That bug in the code would allow someone to kill contracts between any created with the most recent Parity code library—and that is exactly what happened. Someone managed to invoke the code as part of a wallet and made themselves part of every multi-signature contract created since the bug was introduced into the code. The user then “suicided” the wallet and, in the process, disabled all the multi-signature contracts that had been created since July 20 by making them “suicide” as well.

The individual who triggered the lockdown claims to be new to Ethereum and expressed concern about what would happen to him in a forum: