Wormhole protocol, the token bridge between Ethereum and Solana, on Wednesday suffered the loss of 120k wETH tokens from the Network.
The Wormhole attack
The token bridge between Solana and Ethereum, Wormhole, was a victim of a hack on Wednesday. This hack resulted in the token bridge losing 120,000 wETH tokens worth about $321 million. The hacker was said to have distributed the tokens between his Solana and ETH wallets.
The hacker used some of the funds to make purchases, such as SportsX(SX), Finally Usable Crypto Karma(FUCK), Meta Capital(MCAP), and Bored Ape Yacht Club Token(APE).
Wormhole so far has been the token bridge that allows the trading of crypto between leading blockchain platforms, such as Ethereum, Solana, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), polygon, Avalanche, Oasis, and Terra.
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Wormhole’s effort to resolve the issue
The wormhole Network in a tweet assured the public that its ETH collection will be topped up to certify that wETH is backed 1:1.
“The wormhole network was exploited for 120k wETH.
ETH will be added over the next few hours to ensure wETH is backed1:1. More details to come shortly. We are working to get the network back up quickly. Thanks for your patience.” They tweeted.
The Wormhole team according to reports is doing their best to steady the situation. They contacted the hacker through their Ethereum address and offered him a bug bounty of $10 million, if they would return the remnants of the fund exploited, and also give them the exploit details
Samczsun, a white hacker known for helping blockchain protocols resolve crypto-related hacks, in a tweet expressed shock about the hack, noting that Wormhole was not having a good time. “Holy fucking shit,” he exclaimed “@wormholecrypto is not having a good time right now”
As of press time, Many other hackers, including Samcsun, have volunteered to patch the security challenge to help the network.
The Security Challenges of Bridges
The wormhole hack is coming weeks after Viatlik Butterin, Ethereum co-founder, on January warned of the potential security risk of interoperability and blockchain bridges.
“The fundamental security limits of bridges are actually a key reason why while I am optimistic about a multi-chain blockchain ecosystem (there really are a few separate communities with different values and it’s better for them to live separately than all fight over influence on the same thing), I am pessimistic about cross-chain applications.”
vitalik
This is one of the biggest crypto hacks of 2022 after Quibit Finance lost $80 million to a hack in January.
