Lisk is a currency that rarely hits the headlines for news regarding attacks and malicious activity. There is of course a reason for this, Lisk is built upon an ultra secure network of elected delegates. These delegates are elected in order to verify transactions on the Lisk network and thus, hacking and malicious blockchain intervention rarely slips through the net. It does seem however that on the 2nd of June 2018, a false transaction was approved on the Lisk blockchain.

What happened here?

Well, according to Cryptovest:

“A faulty transaction was accepted, though it generated warnings for having a faulty timestamp. The transaction did not go through, but caused block production to start. The Lisk network since then works on an updated version, which does not contain the bug.”

So, whilst the transaction was seemingly accepted, the network did eventually reject it, meaning that block production failed to initiate as a result of this. This at least proves some of the integrity of the security of the Lisk network anyway.

Furthermore, according to Cryptovest:

“Unfortunately for Lisk, the issue has once again underlined the problem of “Elites”, or delegates that have found a way to vote themselves into positions without the wider community. Some believe the delay in turning on the Lisk network again was due to the delayed response of delegates, who would need to update their nodes.”

See the full coverage of this story by Cryptovest for yourself, here-

https://cryptovest.com/news/lisk-lsk-another-project-going-through-malicious-transactions-attack

What now?

It is now confirmed that the recent Lisk update has removed the bug that allowed this to happen, and thus any Lisk assets should be safe. It is always good practice however to keep on the forums and Github, to ensure you have access to the latest updates, if you’ve not yet updated… update.

Otherwise, it seems that a potential disaster has been averted here. Credit to the Lisk network for resolving this so efficiently. Finally, let this serve as a reminder that even the most seemingly secure networks are still vulnerable to attack. Really, this could have been far worse, thankfully though, normal service resumes.