Wormhole Bridge exploit attack, loss of $322 million

The Wormhole Bridge Protocol has been hacked and there are mixed reports of total losses.

The total damage from the attack was 120,000 ETH, worth $322,952,400 at current prices, according to Wormhole.

The earliest reports put the damage of the attack at 80,000 ETH. Later, The Block’s Steven Zheng stated that the amount stolen was “more than 80,000 ETH” and estimated the damage of the attack at 93,750 ETH ($256 million).

Source: Etherescan

But it seems that these smaller estimates do not take into account the stolen funds held on Solana as wETH.

A bridge protocol that allows assets to move across different blockchain protocols. When a user sends an asset from one chain to another, the bridge locks the asset and creates a wrapped version of the fund in the target chain.

Regardless of the amount stolen, it turned out to be one of the largest DeFi attacks in recent history. Other major attacks include a $611 million attack on the Poly network last August. Cream Finance and BadgerDAO were also stolen over $120 million in 2021.

Source: The Block

Still no clear explanation

The official wormhole Twitter account did not provide a detailed explanation of the attack, but said the network was “down for maintenance” as it investigates the attack and will provide updates.

Wormhole developers attempted to contact the attacker via a blockchain message. Team members renewed a “white hat agreement” and offered a $10 million bounty for uncovering the attack strategy and returning the stolen funds.

This announcement also said that an attacker could generate new tokens by mining Wormhole’s Solana VAA verification — the messaging system handled by adopting blockchains.

Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin warned about the shortcomings of cross-chain bridges in early January and pointed out the security risks inherent in such protocols.

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