Gala Games CEO blames $23M exploit on ‘messed up’ internal controls

Gala Games CEO Eric Schiermeyer confirmed on Tuesday there was a “security incident” that resulted in the unauthorized sale of 600 million GALA tokens.

Gala Games’ CEO says “messed up” internal controls were to blame for a recent smart contract “security incident” that saw a hacker manage to steal and sell $23 million worth of its GALA token.

Earlier on May 20 at 7:32 pm UTC, Blockchain watchers reported that 5 billion GALA worth at least $200 million (price at the time) was minted, though the wallet responsible was selling the token in batches — managing to sell 

Reports of the compromise saw GALA hit a 24-hour low of $0.038 — a 20% drop from its daily high just an hour earlier. It has since slightly recovered to $0.041, according to CoinGecko.

“We had an incident that resulted in the unauthorized SALE of 600million […] GALA tokens and the effective BURN of 4.4 billion tokens,” Gala Games co-founder and CEO Eric Schiermeyer wrote in a May 20 X post.

“We messed up our internal controls,” he added. “This shouldn’t have happened, and we are taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Schiermeyer said Gala “identified the compromise” and removed “unauthorized access to the GALA contract.” Its Ethereum contract “is secure” and “was never compromised,” he added.

Gala believes it identified the person responsible and was working with the FBI, the United States Justice Department and “a network of international authorities,” Schiermeyer wrote.

In an X post, Gala Games added the “security incident involving the GALA token has been contained and the impacted wallet has been frozen.”

Gala and Schiermeyer did not disclose who was responsible for the incident or how that person gained access to the GALA contract.

Gala Games did not respond to a request for comment.

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In August, Schiermeyer and fellow co-founder Wright Thurston filed lawsuits against each other on behalf of Gala Games.

Thurston claimed Schiermeyer caused Gala to “sell off and waste millions of dollars in company assets” and Schiermeyer claimed Thurston stole $130 million worth of a GALA.

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