Maestro Crypto Bot Refunds 610 ETH After Router Exploit

Maestrobots Refunding Users After ETH Attack

Maestrobots, a group of cryptocurrency bots on the Telegram messenger app, is refunding users in the aftermath of a 280 Ether (ETH) attack. The Maestro team refunded the users affected by the Maestro Router 2 contract, the platform announced on X (formerly Twitter) on Oct. 25. According to the announcement, Maestrobots paid a total of 610 ETH in its own revenue to cover all the user losses, worth more than $1 million at the time of writing.

“Every wallet that lost tokens in the router exploit has now received the full amount they lost. Some of you ended up with even bigger bags,” Maestro wrote.

In order to provide the most equitable and complete refund, the Maestro team chose to buy and refund tokens instead of sending ETH for nine out of the 11 exploited tokens. As a result, they spent 276 ETH to secure their users’ tokens.

Exploited Tokens Refunded

The Maestro team announced that affected users of the two exploited tokens — Joe (JOE) and Lockheed Martin Inu (LMI) — were refunded in ETH due to a lack of liquidity to buy back the tokens. Blockchain security firm CertiK confirmed to Cointelegraph that it had detected the transactions showing the 334 ETH compensation paid out to users from Maestro.

The refunds came shortly after Maestro reported that the MaestroRouter on ETH mainnet had been compromised on Oct. 24, allowing hackers to siphon around 280 ETH in exploited tokens, worth approximately $485,000 at the time of the hack. Maestro identified the attack within 30 minutes and completely removed the exploit. Additionally, the platform quickly resumed trading, temporarily halting tokens with pools on SushiSwap, ShibaSwap and ETH PancakeSwap.

Maestro clarified that “wallets were not compromised at all during this attack. This was purely directed at the Router.”

MaestroBots: An Overview

According to CertiK’s executive summary, a total of 106 user addresses were affected by a breach in Maestro’s smart contract. Tokens affected included LMI, JOE, Mog Coin (MOG), ApeSwap (BANANA), Oggy inu (OGGY), Jim (JIM), Liquid Protocol (LP), Real Smurf Cat (BSC) and Prophet (PROPHET) — among others.

A spokesperson for Maestrobots told Cointelegraph that “Most of these tokens pumped back up due to the anticipation that we were gonna market buy the tokens. Most of these tokens are still alive and kicking.”

Maestro, also known as MaestroBots on X, is a Telegram crypto bot providing trading services across three networks, including Ethereum, BNB Chain and Arbitrum, with a default transaction fee of 1%. Maestro’s system consists of three bots: the Maestro Whale Bot, the Maestro Sniper Bot and the Maestro Wallet Bot. The Maestro Bots Hub Telegram channel has more than 100,000 subscribers, while its X account counts more than 24,000 followers.