Wormhole Bridge Attacked for $322M

An attacker has exploited the bridge protocol Wormhole for $322 million of ETH, in line with varied stories.

Assault Estimated Above 120,000 ETH

Wormhole has positioned the worth of the assault at 120,000 ETH, an quantity price $322,952,400 at present costs.

The earliest stories positioned the worth of the assault at 80,000 ETH. Later, Steven Zheng of The Block noted that the quantity stolen was “much more than 80,000 ETH,” whereas an article on that web site estimated the worth of the assault at 93,750 ETH or $256 million.

It seems that these smaller estimates didn’t account for stolen funds kept on Solana as wrapped ETH (wETH).

Regardless, the sum of money stolen within the assault makes it one of many largest DeFi assaults in latest historical past. Different giant assaults embody a $611 million assault on Poly Community final August. Cream Finance and BadgerDAO additionally suffered thefts above $120 million in 2021.

No Official Rationalization But

Wormhole’s official Twitter account has not given an in depth clarification of the assault, however has acknowledged that the community is “down for upkeep as [it looks] into a possible exploit.”

Elsewhere, Wormhole builders have tried to contact the attacker by way of a blockchain message. The workforce members prolonged a “white hat settlement” and provided the attacker $10 million to disclose their exploit technique and return the stolen funds.

That message additionally mentioned that the attacker was capable of mint new tokens by exploiting the verification of Wormhole’s Solana VAA—the messaging system processed by receiving blockchains.

Wormhole is a protocol that operates as a bridge between varied blockchains, primarily Ethereum and Solana. It permits customers to maneuver funds shortly and simply between these blockchains.

By the way, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned in regards to the shortcomings of cross-chain bridges in early January, noting the safety dangers inherent in such protocols.

Disclosure: On the time of writing, the writer of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and different cryptocurrencies.