Cosmos co-founder warns of North Korean influence in the Cosmos Hub's LSM

• Cosmos co-founder Jae Kwon claims that North Korean agents had helped to develop the LSM code of Cosmos Hub.
• Kwon accuses Zaki Manian of IQlusion to hide unsolved security risks.
• Kwon calls for an immediate examination and a stricter supervision for future implementations.

COSMOS co-founder Jae Kwon has serious concerns about the integrity of the Liquid Staking Module (LSM) of the Cosmos Hub and claims that people were involved in significant parts of his development.

In a Kwon was published on Tuesday and accused the Cosmos-Validator-Hosting company IQlusion and his director Zaki Manian of "gross negligence", to have permitted the integration of the module without an appropriate security check.

The LSM developers of Cosmos Hub are North Korea agents

According to Kwon, the development of the LSM began in August 2021 under the direction of IQlusion and Manian, with contributions by developers Jun Kai and Sarawut Sanit.

Kwon claims that these developers were later identified as North Korean agents and had made a significant part of the module code.

Although Kwon had been informed about her connections since March 2023, he claimed that Manian had held back this information and did not disclose several unsolved security risks in connection with the LSM.

The controversy gained according to the manian in importance Recognition in social media that he had known from the developers associated with North Korea for months. However, instead of taking preventive measures, such as the implementation of an additional audits or the information of the Cosmos community, Kwon said that Manian had still claimed that the module was "ready for use".

KWON accused Manian a "serious breach of trust" because he gave priority to the security of the community.

critical weaknesses in the LSM

In an audit in 2022, security problems had already appeared, in which critical weaknesses were uncovered in the LSM. According to the developers associated with North Korea, these weaknesses were reported.

kwon pointed out that despite Manian's claim to rewrite the LSM code before the provision, there are still considerable risks, especially since the module was not an independent function, but a number of modifications that were based on existing Cosmos discount modules.

This could possibly suspend all of the nuclear token security threats.

The Cosmos Governance Community has asked

kwon to immediately initiate a comprehensive examination of the LSM. In addition, he asked the Interchain Foundation to introduce stricter examination standards and create a supervisory framework to ensure the security of future Cosmos implementations.