Cosmos developers have found a critical vulnerability within the inter-blockchain communication protocol (IBC), the cross-chain messaging protocol of the DeFi ecosystem. They warn all Cosmos blockchains might be at risk.

The vulnerability was found during a security audit following last week's $100 million attack on the BNB Smart Chain, which uses the Cosmos blockchain. Crypto exchange Binance's blockchain underwent a hard fork to isolate the exploited area after the hack.

In a blog post, Cosmos co-founder Ethan Buchman wrote about his plan to fix the Cosmos ecosystem and secure the blockchains within.

"Members of the core Cosmos and Osmosis teams have been extensively auditing IBC in the aftermath of the BSC exploit. We have discovered a critical security vulnerability that impacts all IBC-enabled Cosmos chains, for all versions of IBC," Buchman said. "Steps have already been taken to ensure that all major public IBC-enabled chains have been patched."

The patch fix will be released Friday. Buchman advised all chains and validators to upgrade to the newly released fix. The co-founder of Cosmos also pointed out there could be chain-halts during the upgrade.

"The patch can be deployed individually by validators without a chain-halt upgrade and should be applied as soon as possible. That said, it is still possible that validators and/or chains will halt during the upgrade process," confirmed Buchman.

Cosmos has been one of the best-performing tokens since last year's bull run. Investment manager VanEck, in a previous report, said "a substantial portion of future public blockchains will exist in the Cosmos," adding that over 5,000 blockchains will be built on the same before 2030 because of Cosmos' "superior technology."

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The underlying message is that self-custody of crypto is far too risky, in contrast to the security of traditional bank or brokerage accounts and crypto institutions.  Pixabay